The Private Letters of Christine Daae
by SuperSecretSummer
Summary: A modern day retelling of the Phantom of the Opera set at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Based on, and expanding, my vlog-style web series, The Private Letters of Christine Daae.
1. Letter One - The First of Many?

Hey there! If your reading this, welcome to my first piece of fanfiction! (Not counting, of course, the masterpiece that was _Star Wars 3.5,_ which I started shortly after the release of Star Wars III when I was about twelve. I did not know that fanfic even existed until I was about 20, so it wasn't until much later in my life that I realized what exactly I had been doing when I wrote the later-deleted opening sentence "Anakin stood over Padme's grave…)

ANYWAY this story is based on a web-series of the same name I made back in 2014-2015. Watch it on YouTube, if you'd like, as this fic and the series will complement each other nicely, and give you a rounded view of the world of the story.

I've been meaning to write more, but I haven't been doing a great job because coming up with original ideas can be Very Stressful once you get to the planning and writing stage. So, to bolster my self-esteem, I am turning back to the bosom of a story I have loved since I was eight, and that I already told in a different medium.

See, I already did the research into the New York City sewer system and its underground rivers. I've looked into the abandoned subway platforms. I've Google Mapped the nearby coastal small towns that start with the letter P that could replace Perros-Guirec. I did the legwork, I plotted the plot, I worked out all the snarls that came with translating Phantom into a modern setting, and had a whole bunch of details left over that I couldn't fit into the format of the series.

So I have decided to write this. I can add all the details I couldn't add to the web-series, I can feel like I've accomplished something, and brush-up my story telling skills.

Without any further ado, The Private Letters of Christine Daae

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Letter One – The First of Many?

Absence was an interesting feeling. There was a hole, a cavern, a great gaping maw just to left of what felt normal, and it made all that normal feel alien and strange.

She was just to the left of where she should be, catching sounds at odd angles, answering questions too long after they'd been asked.

His absence was making her absent from all she knew she should attend, and she felt dizzy at the cliff's edge inside of her, and the rain making tracks on the window surprised her simply because it was falling the correct way.

"Christine."

And it was so, so quiet here on the precipice. It was missing something, she knew, but the silence was hurting her ears and making it hard to think. She felt the wind rushing up from the cavern's depths, and it smelled of the sea and of home.

"Christine."

She wanted to go home, to already be home, but she remembered what was missing, and why it was so quiet here inside herself, and she knew that home used to be just to the left. Home was where the cavern is, and all the violins in the world couldn't play the song she most wanted to hear.

"Christine!"

Christine jolted back into herself and felt the squeaky leather of the couch shift beneath her. She was home. This was home, and the only person she had left was looking at her expectantly.

Christine had known Mamma Valerius for many, many years. She could remember being eight and the feeling of awe that came from stepping into the New York City penthouse for the first time. She remembered running the long hallways, and the way library always smelled a little like pipe tobacco. She remembered sitting in the tall, elegant French woman's lap, and being told to call her "grande-mere."

Christine had known even then, even when she couldn't pronounce grand-mere, or the simpler maman, that Mrs. Valerius was not really her family. But Christine hadn't particularly cared, and when they settled on Mamma, she had been quite content to adopt the fancy, nice lady and her husband.

"I'm sorry, Mamma. What did you say?"

Mamma Valerius sighed gently, and her eyes took on that pitying expression Christine was getting to know entirely too well.

"I said, how are you feeling today?" The now-old woman repeated, her lightly accented English was gentle and slow.

"Isn't there some sort of rule against psycho-analyzing your loved ones? I feel like there is." Christine punctuated the statement with a small laugh and a smile, but she wasn't entirely joking.

"Christine, you know I'm not trying to psycho-analyze you. I'm a psychiatrist, yes, but if I can't ask my sweet, sweet goddaughter how her day was without being attacked in this manner – well!"

Christine laughed and joined Mamma V on the plush couch by the fire, planting a kiss on her cheek before resting her head on the older woman's shoulder. The cashmere was soft under her cheek, and Christine felt grateful, yet again, to have grown up in such a lovely home, surrounded by such fine things. She remembered the cold barns and the even colder stoops that had come before, and she wrapped her arms around Mamma Valerius.

"You know how I'm doing, Mamma."

"I know." Mamma Valerius rested her gray head on Christine's. "I know. That's why I brought you something."

Mamma V placed a box in Christine's lap. Christine lifted the lid, and rifled through the substantial pile of letters within.

"Oh, Mamma, what is this?" Christine asked, as she picked up one of the letters. 'To My Love" was written in an elegant script across the envelope.

"These are the letters I wrote to Mr. Valerius when he left us." Her voice shook, and Christine gently took her hand. "After the funeral, I was so sad, and lost. He and I had lived in this penthouse for twenty years, and it suddenly didn't feel like home. You and your father brought me a great deal of comfort in those days, but I needed to talk to my husband. So I figured out a way."

The old woman reached for the box, and Christine handed it to her. Pulling out one of the letters, she opened the unsealed envelope and handed the letter to Christine.

The paper was smooth, and covered in shaky handwriting, and Christine ran her finger over the greeting, feeling where the pen had pressed too hard in writing "My Love…" She could see splotches of watery ink where tears had caused the words to blur, and Christine smiled sadly as she handed it back to Mamma Valerius.

"I wrote these letters to my husband," Mamma Valerius continued, "when I felt sad. Occasionally, I wrote them when I felt happy. They became a place for me to sort my feelings. To be weak, when I could no longer be strong. After a while, I didn't really need to write them anymore. I thought, maybe, you should write some too. To your father."

Christine stiffened, and Mamma Valerius placed an arm about her shoulders.

"It is only an idea, my little songbird. You do not have to do it." She kissed Christine's forehead, and headed towards the door. Christine looked at the letters, and wanted to say something to make Mamma Valerius not worry so much.

"Mamma!" She called, and the old woman paused at the door.

"Oui?"

"I made it into the chorus at the Metropolitan Opera. I just found out today."

"I knew you would." The old woman replied with a warm smile. "Think about what I said. I'm very proud of you."

o...o0o...o

Christine lay on her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling tiles. The box of letters rested on her nightstand. She was glad Mamma was proud of her. It was the only reason she accepted the position at the opera.

She had auditioned before her father's death, when he was still only sick, and there was still something like hope. When her dream of singing to and for the city of New York still felt achievable. She had felt like maybe, if she got a spot on the chorus, it might help him.

It was a stupid, idiotic little fantasy she knew, but still she took everything she had learned at Julliard, which she had been able to attend thanks to Pappa Valerius being a well known composer and professor, and auditioned. She poured her heart and hope into her song.

Two weeks later, her father had died. It had been a month now, and she had almost forgotten she had auditioned. A letter from the opera had arrived that morning, and she had called to accept as soon as she read it.

Every ounce of music inside her had died with her father, but she couldn't pass up this opportunity. She had to do it for him, and she had to do it for Mamma Valerius.

She thought about his absence, and felt that chasm open up just to the left of her bed. She didn't like the dizzy feeling of being on the edge, and she looked at the box of letters.

She didn't want to write. She'd never been good at journaling, but maybe if she could just…say the words out loud.

She got off the bed and dug through her desk drawers until she found her old video camera. She set it on her headboard, fiddled with the record button, and started to speak.

"Is this thing on? Um, hi. My name is Christine Daae…"

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review, and watch The Private Letters of Christine Daae on YouTube for the full experience!


	2. Letter Two - Starting Off Strong

Letter Two – Starting Off Strong

Special thanks to **Dkk5** and **LikeLightInGlass** for my first reviews!

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Christine blinked hard several times in an attempt to make her eyes feel less dry. It had been weeks since she had sufficient reason to put in contacts, and her eyes were rebelling.

Foolishly, she had left her glasses at home. That meant one whole, glorious day of weathering the pressure in her head and the occasional blur, and she was so, so very happy to have left herself with no options.

She stood at the edge of the sharp shadow cast by the Metropolitan Opera. The fountain bubbled quietly beside her, and she mused distractedly on how simple the shadow was in comparison to the building before her. The towering, symmetrical arches. The clean, modern lines. All that gold and elegance visible through the almost entirely glass front was not at all reflected in the strong contrast of sun and shadow.

It was easier to muse on the concept of substance and shadow than actually go inside, but she knew she couldn't be late on her first day. She stood and grabbed her bag, pulling out a small bottle of eyedrops. She dripped the saline solution into her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and walked through the door.

Christine migrated toward the loosely gathered group of men and women in the far corner. They had the same air of awe and confusion she felt, and she found she was correct in assuming they were also new chorus members.

After a group tour of the Opera, they filed into a rehearsal room, and found seats. She found a chair by herself in what she hoped would turn out to be the soprano section, and began flipping through the folder of music she had found on the seat.

Christine felt nervous. She felt awkward, and shaky, and scared. She hated it. She used to be so open. She used to think making friends was as simple as making someone laugh, and now she couldn't even meet anyone's eye. She had sequestered herself in a corner, she was avoiding people by perusing this folder, and she knew it. She knew it, and she couldn't stop. She didn't even know what song she was reading, but she did know she was starting to panic. Her head was hurting from the pressure of the contact lenses, her breath was coming out in shorter and shorter bursts, and her eyes were starting to burn.

She wasn't ready for this. She couldn't do this! Everything was slipping into that hole to the left of how she knew she should be feeling. It hadn't been enough time, and she wanted to go home. She closed the folder and grabbed her bag when a group of girls sat near her, cutting off her exit. She stayed in an awkward half crouch for a long moment before sitting back down. One of the girls met her eye and smiled at her. Christine smiled weakly in return, and forced herself to take long deep breaths.

She thought about all the reasons she accepted the position. It was her last tie to her father. It didn't matter what she thought she could do. This was something she had to do. It was she was made for. It was all she ever dreamed of, and she was going to hold onto the burnt little husk of that dream with all the strength she had left.

She was just starting to feel calm when the conductor entered and introduced himself. He congratulated them on having mostly sorted themselves into the proper rehearsal configuration, and after shuffling the few incorrectly seated parties, he tapped his baton on his music stand.

"Congratulations, all, on being accepted into this prestigious company." The conductor scanned the group gravely. "For those of you returning, welcome back. For our newest members, I am Mr. Reyer. As I'm sure you are aware, we received applications from hundreds of talented individuals from all over the world. You were chosen. That means something."

"It means we impressed the Phantom." whispered the girl who had smiled at Christine. The girl's friend elbowed her and both tried to hide their smirks. Christine wondered at the comment, but turned her attention back to the front of the room.

"Endeavor to be worthy of the spot you hold. Never stop striving for excellence." The conductor continued. "Remember that you can be replaced, but work to make yourselves irreplaceable. Now. We begin!"

They went through the typical warm ups, and sight read some of the season's upcoming production. By the end of the day, Christine felt exhausted, but a little better for the rehearsal.

o...o0o...o

Each consecutive day proved busier, fuller, and she felt the dawnings of excitement. She was here. She was singing at The Metropolitan Opera! Everything was unfolding almost smoothly, and she began to be glad she had accepted the position.

A week passed in this manner, and the conductor had led them to the stage for the first time. They had no blocking, but he had wanted the group to get a sense of their sound in the space in which they would be performing.

A group of people burst through the doors to the auditorium and filtered onto the stage, interrupting their progress. Christine lowered her music, grateful for the pause. The song was one she had learned with her father, and she was beginning to feel unsteady.

She looked toward the ceiling and took a breath, collecting herself. The chattering group was joining them on the stage, and as she turned her attention towards them, her eyes passed over the boxes. A flash of something drew her attention back towards the box seats, but it was nothing but a gently undulating curtain.

The party consisted of the managers, Messrs Debienne and Poligny, and several of the leads.

"Mr. Reyer!" Poligny called warmly "So this is our new crop of singers, eh? Mind if we pop in for a bit, give them a listen?"

Reyer acquiesced, and the group had begun to shuffle off the stage and towards the seats when a sharp cough halted the progress. The managers turned and regarded the well dressed, elegant woman standing center stage with her arms folded. She tilted her head and shot them a look, self-importance dripping from the gesture.

"Of course," said Poligny. "My apologies. Everyone, these are our leads. The majority of them will be taking the smaller bit parts, but it is my honor to introduce our primo uomo, Ubaldo Piangi, and our primma donna, Lana Carlotta."

Lana Carlotta curtsied, actually curtsied, before taking Piangi's arm and striding from the stage. The rest of the group joined them, and the opening notes began.

Christine tried to shove down the emotions swelling inside her, and focus on the music. She sang, trying to give herself over to only the notes, but images rose, unbidden, of her father on his violin. The two of them reading by the fire. His eyes crinkling over the bowstrings as he signaled her entrance to a song.

She felt her voice crack, and saw a few curious heads turn towards the noise. She tried to sing softer, but a powerful swell in the music required fortissimo, and she felt her voice strain away from her, sour and sharp.

Reyer looked at her sharply, and she glanced down. The music suddenly made no sense, and she had lost her place. She moved her mouth, but no sound came out.

"Miss Daae! Eyes forward! You are _referencing_ the music, not reading a novel." called Mr. Reyer. Christine felt her face flush, and she met his eyes. He gave her a warning look, and turned his attention to the tenors.

She followed along as best she could and sang as softly for the rest of the rehearsal. As soon as they were released, she darted to the wings. She slipped backstage and wedged herself into the shadowy space between two flats.

Christine waited until the sounds of the company retreated, and silence fell over the stage. She had decided to wear her glasses that day, which she removed as she sank to the ground and began to cry softly into her hands. She thought of Reyer's words earlier that week " _Remember that you can be replaced, but work to make yourselves irreplaceable."_

She didn't want to be replaced. She wanted to be here. It was a small, tiny wish, the desire to stay, but it was there, and knowing it was there was something warm and good.

She wiped her eyes, and took a shuddering breath. She knew she wanted this. She knew, and she wanted to tell someone. It had been about a week since her last "letter." She had started a YouTube channel specifically for it, and uploaded the video without tags. She didn't really want anyone to find it, but the act felt incomplete without putting the letter somewhere other than her hard drive.

She picked up her bag and walked toward the door, wiping her glasses on the edge of her white tank top as she headed out, into the sun. When she got home, maybe she'd try to film another letter. Maybe she would make it a weekly thing. She had a feeling she might need it.

o...o0o...o

He watched the girl go with a mingled sense of annoyance, and...pity? Disgusting. He hadn't felt pity in years.

He had handpicked this chorus, and she was a discordant thorn in what was meant to be a harmonious bouquet.

He slipped quietly down a rope from the flies, and moved toward shadowy space between flats she had been occupying. He hadn't meant to watch her as she cried, but she'd been standing on the trapdoor above the quickest route to his lair.

He liked calling it a lair. It sounded dramatic, and so terribly important.

He slipped through the trapdoor and into the tunnels, winding his way through the near complete darkness by muscle memory alone.

He remembered the girl's audition. She had been good. She had had promise. Nothing spectacular. Julliard taught, if he remembered correctly, and that lot usually bore the stamp of their prestigious education with insufferable pretension.

He unlocked the door and turned on the siren sensor. Crossing to his desk, he rifled through the abundant papers looking for his notes on the choral auditions.

Ah, yes. There she was. Christine Daae. Voice decent, but rough. Not her fault really, those fools at Juilliard couldn't train a canary to sing. Chorus, possible promotion to bit parts after a few years. She'd been acceptable. It was why he had chosen her.

But then, this first week! Exhausted, out of tune, distracted, her tone breathy, her posture atrocious. She was slipping by, singing just well enough the Reyer didn't notice.

But he noticed.

He noticed everything. She needed to be replaced, and he had the letter to the managers written and sealed with the name of her replacement. He had meant to deliver it that afternoon with his usual flair; drop it from his box just as Debienne and Poligny passed below.

But he did not deliver it.

She was sad. He could see it now. He'd been watching through vent slats and listening behind walls, picking out the discord by ear. He hadn't truly watched her sing, until now.

She was heartbroken. She was shattered. Looking at her was like picking up shards of glass, dangerous but necessary.

Oh, all those others, acting acting always acting. Painted smiles, the comedy, the tragedy. Their work on the stage was them at their most honest. He knew details about everyone who worked in his opera. All the little sordid ones that could be useful. But no, everything was always fine with them. They shuttered themselves up, smiled their big, perfect smiles, breathed through their noses, and there was nothing in their singing because they never let themselves really feel.

But she felt, she felt and she didn't hide. Yes, he could see she was trying to hide it, but her face was too open, her exquisite pain too deep. Something melancholy and tragic.

Familiar.

Looking at her was like looking in mirror, and for once, he did not hate his reflection.

So he let her stay.

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Thanks for reading! Please review!


	3. Letter 3-There's No Such Thing As Ghosts

Letter Three - There's No Such Thing as Ghosts...?

* * *

"Skeletal. Slender and towering and skeletal. He seems neither living nor dead; bones brought to life to dance upon this mortal coil once more. They say he cloaks himself in the trappings of a gentleman of old. A fine suit, a proper hat, a billowing cape. I've seen him. Seen his face, right over there, ladies -" a hiccup, and frightened titters and gasps filtered through the backstage.

Christine rounded a corner, and found a group of fifteen or so, made of dancers and a chorus member or two, surrounding Joseph Buquet.

"...yes! I have seen his face!" Buquet continued, combing a clump of stringy hair out of his eyes with grubby fingers. "Yellow and sallow. Thin. His skin is stretched tight over sharp cheekbones, and he has no nose! No one would fault you for thinking his head a living skull!"

The stagehand looped one arm around the shoulder of an unsuspecting dancer, and gestured wildly with the other. Christine shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. It had only been a couple of weeks, but already she'd heard to steer clear of Joseph Buquet. Her gaze slipped back to the dancer, who was wearing a brave smile and trying to slip out from under Buquet's arm. Lyla Jammes. Christine was almost positive that was the girl's name. She had almost managed to extricate herself from Buquet when he spun her dramatically towards himself, and wrapped both arms around her.

"His eyes are sunk deep into his skull, holes so black it looks as if he has no eyes at all!" Buquet was practically shouting now, trying to drown out the murmurs of annoyance from the surrounding crowd. The poor girl now struggling to push herself away. Christine looked around and made eye contact with the dancer next to her.

Christine had been doing a very good job of making herself quite miserable and lonely the past few weeks. She was sinking into a habit of avoiding eye contact, isolating herself, and as a consequence she was merely acquainted with sopranos who sat near her during rehearsal, and knew only a few of the ballerinas by sight. Christine hadn't met the girl next to her, but could tell from the girl's expression that she didn't like what she was seeing anymore than Christine.

"Unless, of course, it is dark! Pitch black!" Buquet pontificated. The crowd looked in equal measure enthralled by the story and discomfited. Christine took a deep breath and leaned over to the dancer.

"Wanna help me get her away from him?" Christine whispered.

"More than anything." The girl smiled back. "Follow my lead."

Christine was glad of the offer, because she hadn't had a clear plan of action. She pushed her way through the crowd after the girl until the two broke into the little bubble occupied by Buquet and Lyla Jammes.

"When it is dark, his light up, red as the devil, and glow like burning coals! His fiery gaze–"

"Ok, Joe that's enough." The dancer interrupted. Buquet, cut off mid-sentence, shifted so that only his arm remained on Lila's shoulder. Christine moved around the dancer and stepped towards Buquet and the girl.

"We've all heard this little story before, Buquet. You got us the first time, but it's getting a little old." The dancer continued, and nodded slightly to Christine. Christine stepped forward and grabbed Lyla's hand.

"Hey! I'm so glad I found you!" Christine said brightly, tugging Lyla away from Buquet. The entire crowd seemed to let out a sigh of relief. "I've been meaning to ask you something!"

Christine babbled on as she pulled the girl towards the chorus dressing room. The crowd was dispersing, and the dancer followed behind them.

"Just cause your mama's got a job in the box office doesn't mean you have to be such a square!" Buquet called after them as they shut the dressing room door.

"Oh my gosh, thank you!" Lyla said, throwing her arms around a surprised Christine. "I didn't know how I was going to get away from him."

"Well, he's the worst, and we girl's have to stick together!" Meg laughed as Lyla pulled away from Christine. "You're new here, right? One of the sopranos?

"Yeah, my name's Christine Daae. You're both dancers? "

"Yup, I'm Meg Giry, lowly ballet rat, and this damsel in distress is Lil' Jammes." Meg said with a sarcastic little curtsy.

"Lyla! It's Lyla, Meg! Stop calling me that!" Lyla interjected.

"Thanks for helping out." Meg said to Christine. "Brave of you, so early on in your career."

"Well, it's what anyone would do in the situation." Christine said with a laugh. "Was he serious about all that ghost stuff?"

Meg laughed as Lyla crossed the room and opened the door a crack.

"Don't get me started on Joseph Buquet. Ever since he found the 'Ghost's Lair' over by the flats, he won't stop talking about the Phantom of the Opera."

"Wait til you hear the one about the floating fireball head with an army of rats in the basement! Looks like the coast is clear!" Lyla called, peeking through the crack. "I've gotta get my bags. Thanks again!"

She slipped through the door and headed for the dancer's dressing room. Meg and Christine followed her to the door.

"He should keep his mouth shut." Meg mumbled.

"Every theater has to have a ghost story, I suppose." Christine said.

"It was nice meeting you, Christine." Meg said quickly, changing the subject and walking backward down the hallway. She spun, and called over her shoulder with a laugh, "Let's fight crime again sometime!"

o...o0o...o

Rehearsals were going well. Christine wasn't getting as lost in her own head, and the constant exposure to music was dulling the sensitivity to it that had arisen after her father's passing. Color was slowly bleeding back into the things around her, and she thought happily of her interaction with Meg Giry the day before. She'd felt like herself, unafraid to speak to a stranger, wanting to help someone. She sang a little stronger, and was enjoying the morning's rehearsal. The chorus was reviewing a particularly tricky few measures in Faust when there was a knock at the door.

With apologies and promises to be only a few minutes, the managers Debienne and Poligny entered.

"Greetings, all. Some of our newer members might not have heard, but there is a rumor going around concerning our retirement." Poligny said from the front of the room. Murmurs flitted about the room like sparrows, confirming that many had indeed heard the rumor.

"We are here to confirm that we are indeed retiring." Poligny continued, "We have had a long run, and we've loved every moment, but we find that we can no longer…We feel we can't...the pressure of taking –"

"We've gotten old, and we'd like to move on." Debienne cut in, shooting Poligny a cutting look. "There will be a Farewell Gala the Tuesday after opening night, where selections from our most triumphant shows will be performed by our best stars, both past and present, and we will introduce the new managers. We are excited to see all of you there. Monsieur Reyer has been provided with the choral piece you'll be performing from La Bohème. Thank you."

The two left the room hurriedly, Debienne whispering harshly to Poligny, and Christine thought she caught the word "phantom" before the door closed behind them. She'd been hearing bits and pieces about the Opera Ghost since she'd arrived, and Buquet's performance yesterday had been the most complete account she'd heard of the spectre. She wondered why the manager's might mention the ghost, but the thought slipped away as she took the music for the gala from the soprano next to her, and added it to her folder.

Hours passed, and the rehearsal flowed smoothly on. Reyer dismissed them, and the members of the chorus filtered out quickly. As Christine stood to leave, the strap of her bag caught on the seat. The jolt caused her to drop her music folder and spilled the contents of her purse. Pages of music slipped down the steps of the risers. She sighed, and knelt to pick up her belongings. A few girls helped her gather the pages, lip balms, spilled gum, and her small video camera. She thanked them and waved them off, telling them to go on without her.

It took ages to get the music back in order, and by the time Christine was finished, she was quite alone. She headed through the maze of silent halls toward the dressing room. It was eerie, being alone here, and thoughts of the Opera Ghost rose unbidden to her mind.

Footsteps echoed behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder.

The hallway was empty.

Christine quickened her pace. Rounding a corner, she saw the door of the dressing room and hurried toward it. She pulled the door open, but a hand shot in front of her face and slammed it shut.

Buquet loomed over her. He smelled of sweat and unbrushed teeth, and his body blocked the door.

"Please move." said Christine stiffly.

"You're new here, right?" Buquet said, ignoring her. An unpleasant smile oozed slowly across his face.

"Have you seen me here before?" Christine retorted. She tried to move around him. "I need to get in the dressing room."

"Don't be in such a hurry, sweetheart. I got something for you." Christine eyed him warily. He handed her a folded piece of paper with a wink. "See you around."

He leaned closer as he pushed off the wall, and sauntered down the hall. He was out of sight when Meg came out of the dancer's dressing room.

"Hey, Christine! What's up?" Meg said brightly.

"I just got this from Joseph Buquet." Christine held the note gingerly between two fingers.

"Oooh, a summons to see the managers?"

"Is that what this is? Oh no!"

"Hey, it could be good news!" Meg laughed at Christine's panic as she tore the note open.

"I'm supposed to see them in their office before I leave for the day." Christine groaned. "They're firing me. I suck, and they know it, and they're firing me."

Meg shook her head sympathetically as Christine re-read the note. Christine opened the door of the dressing room and grabbed her coat. Meg followed as she hurried toward the office.

"I'll walk with you. I'm meeting my mom in the box office. Hey, you're gonna be fine!" Meg said, pulling Christine, who was beginning to breathe a little too sharply, to stop. "Listen. I'm sure it's fine. Probably some new hire thing."

Christine nodded. She would be ok. Yeah. It was just a new hire thing. It had to be. Meg smiled and the two started walking.

"I've been meaning to ask you," Meg said, "Would you like to got out with us tonight? There's a group of us, some dancers and some chorus people."

"I don't know…"

"Come on, it'll be fun. We'll celebrate if you come out of this with a job, and we'll send you off proper if you don't!" Meg joked, and they stopped at door to the offices

"Ok, that sounds like fun." Christine said, and Meg grabbed Christine's phone from her hand.

"Awesome! I'm sending myself a text so I have your info. I'll text you where and when, mmkay? Good luck in there!" Meg pushed the phone back in Christine's hand, and headed down the hall. Christine took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

She sat where the receptionist asked her to sit and she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

She checked her phone. Only five minutes had passed, and she hated how the anxious feeling in her gut made it feel like twenty. She could hear voices coming from the behind the managers' door.

Christine blinked back the tears she felt growing in her eyes. She knew she had lost whatever spark had interested them in her. This was it. She thought she was sneaking under the radar, passable, but they'd noticed, and now she was going to be asked to leave.

The voices behind the door rose, and Christine stared hard at the floor in front of her. She didn't want to lose her spot at the opera, and she didn't know what she would do with herself if she did.

Shouts exploded from from within the office, and Christine felt her stomach drop.

"...I won't be pushed around, I tell you! This is the last time! Christine Daae!" Debienne barked, bursting through the door to the office, and motioned at her to enter.

She stood hastily, and Debienne straightened his jacket and motioned her into the room. She entered, and sat nervously at the chair in front of the desk. The two men exchanged glances and both visibly tried to calm themselves.

"Miss Daae." Poligny ground out through a tightly clenched jaw. "It has come to our attention that there are too many people in the chorus dressing room."

Christine took a deep breath. This was it. Why not just come out and say it?

"And we have decided to move you into a new dressing room to help the situation."

"Wait, I'm not fired?" Christine burst out in surprise. The comment seemed to ease some of the tension, and the managers chuckled. Poligny tapped an envelope addressed in red repeatedly against the table.

"No, quite the contrary. From reports, we hear you and the other new members are getting on quite well. Due to the overflow, we've chosen a few of you to pair up and move to the spare rooms. However, as the room you are assigned to is quite small, you'll have a solo room. "

"Oh. Oh, good." Christine was shocked by her good fortune. "Why me? I mean, um, thank you, of course. Sorry, I'm just surprised."

"Oh, you were chosen quite by chance. We chose at random from the chorus. Pulled your name out of a hat, so to say." Poligny crumpled the letter he was holding and the smile he gave Christine seemed forced. "Our secretary will show you the way to your room. We apologize for the mess, we just wanted to get this sorted as soon as possible. Good evening, Miss Daae."

o...o0o...o

The secretary unlocked the door for Christine, and apologized for the mess. Christine set her purse and phone down inside the door, and stepped into the hallway to thank the secretary. The door swung shut with a soft click behind Christine as she spoke with the secretary for some minutes, going over the rules for the room and the best route to the stage. She took the key, and the two shook hands. The secretary headed back towards the office, and Christine turned back into the dressing room, shutting the door behind her.

Her purse was open, and the phone was on the chair.

Christine felt a chill go through her. She was certain that she had set her phone on the table. This wasn't the first time she'd felt like her things had been moved or her purse sifted through. Could it be...

She shook the feeling off and forced her train of thought down more pleasant rails. She looked around. Her own dressing room! It was full of old props and costumes, and the make-up table was crowded into a corner next to a large gold curtain and full book shelf.

This was going to take a little work, but she was excited. She had a place to make her own. Smiling, she took the camera from her bag and sat down to film a letter. She was full of conflicting feelings and jumbled thoughts. Her words came out slowly, the thoughts processing as she said them. She laughed at how stilted and scared she sounded when she rewatched the footage, but she had a sort of one-take policy with these videos. She didn't want, or need them, to be too edited or polished.

She was glad she'd decided to make the "letters." She liked making them, and she'd even made a little title card and opening song. It was good to have a place to vent.

She took a last look around the room, needing to head home and change for her night on the town with Meg and the others, but unwilling to leave just yet.

She moved through the room, running a finger through the dust on the frame of an old poster, and brushing the fur of a costume cloak. Her eyes fell on a white sheet toward the back of the room, and she moved toward it.

The sheet hung almost from the ceiling. Grasping the edge, she pulled. She squinted and coughed at the dust swirling about her head. Dropping the sheet at her feet, she gasped.

A beautiful, gilt framed mirror was affixed flush against the wall, gleaming from floor to ceiling. She studied the room in the reflection, until she met her own eyes. The circles weren't quite as dark. She was sleeping better, she knew, and her wide, dark eyes seemed familiar again.

She felt happy. A little happy. She had plans for the evening and a room to decorate and her dream job. She tried on a small smile and was glad to see it looked genuine.

Something rustled in the room, and she spun. There was no one but her. She laughed at herself, and grabbed her bag.

She heard the noise again as she locked the door.

It almost seem like it came from behind the mirror.

* * *

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Please review, and remember to watch the web-series The Private Letters of Christine Daae in YouTube for a multimedia experience!


	4. Letter Four - Let's Discuss My Situation

Letter Four - Let's Discuss My Situation

* * *

Christine smiled at her reflection in the large mirror in her dressing room.

Her new dressing room.

She had come to the opera a few hours early to start organizing the crowded space, and she still couldn't believe her luck. Was it far away from the other chorus members? Sure. Was it down a lonely, dark corridor? Absolutely. Did she care? Not one bit. She had her own dressing room! She did! Brand new soprano Christine Daae!

Dropping the backpack she'd loaded with cleaning supplies, she started with the largest pieces; clearly props from old shows that must have some nostalgic value, but were far too outdated to be used in current productions. She could practically feel the 1980's oozing off of some of them, and wondered what show had been "modernized" all those years ago wherein a tryptic of orchids in pastel pink and soft gray vases would be appropriate scene decoration.

The room would be eclectic, Christine decided, and she did not mind this. It made the place feel lived in, like a second-hand sweater found at a thrift store. Moving the pieces into a nook along the back wall, she felt something small and warm beneath her ribs ruffle.

This room could feel like home, and that thought felt like hope. Maybe not yet, but it could. She smiled to herself as she tacked the heavy gold curtain across the nook, blocking the more outlandish pieces from view. She pushed, pulled, dusted, and scrubbed until an alarm on her phone chirped. 30 minutes until rehearsal.

Wiping the thin film of sweat from her brow, she surveyed the room. The walls were teal with outdated, but charming, columns of gold fleur-de-lis. The gold curtain cordoning off the 1980's stage relics complimented the pattern nicely, and played off the gold lettering of the books on the shelf. A glass goblet that might have been used in the final scenes of Hamlet sat next to old opera collections, scripts with stage directions written by cast members long since gone, and a few novels, lost and never found, with masquerade masks dancing across the top shelf.

Christine was delighted by the fact that there was an actual changing screen in the dressing room. It matched every mental picture she'd ever conjured of being an opera singer, and she could imagine herself, after a night spent dazzling the crowd, slipping behind the screen and emerging in an elaborate dressing gown. She would drop gracefully into the ornately embroidered armchair she had found, and eat chocolates left by men who were madly in love with her. _Now I just need to buy an elaborate dressing gown_ , she thought with a small laugh. Next to the door, she had moved a tall, antique, chest of drawers painted dark green, and decorated the top with crystal decanters, cut glass perfume bottles with squeeze bulbs, and a pair of small silver egg cups that let out a bright _Ting!_ when she tapped them together.

Against the opposite wall, she had moved the vintage vanity to a place of honor next to the large mirror. The oval table was painted white, and affixed to it with curving wooden arms was a matching oval of mirror surrounded by small, round lights. In the midst of cleaning she had found a box of replacement bulbs, and the mirror was now glowing cheerfully.

Christine crossed to the large mirror and swept her shoulder-length brown hair into a ponytail. She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, and surveyed herself critically as she straightened her shirt.

She looked ok, she thought. It wasn't her best day, but she'd certainly looked worse. She was just short enough to make fun of herself for being so, and curvy in ways other girls jokingly claimed they envied. She didn't buy it, feeling more often than not that she took up too much space, but she appreciated the gesture. In the past, she'd tried very hard to take her father at his word when he called beautiful.

"Do not be cruel to yourself, _älskling_." he'd say, using the Swedish term of endearment. "You have beautiful, big eyes that can see the wonder around you. You have a beautiful, big smile that can bring cheer to others. You have a beautiful, big heart full of love. Those are things that make you beautiful, _älskling,_ no matter how you might feel about yourself."

She met her own eyes in the mirror.

 _I have eyes that don't look as sad today._

 _I have a smile that is not forced today._

 _I have friends and coworkers to whom I can show kindness._

 _I have faith that corpulent sopranos will always be in fashion at the opera._

Christine smirked at her own stupid joke, and then smiled wider as she remembered the previous night's activities with Meg and a handful of others. It had been fun. Her life had been a repetitive schedule of home and work, and she had been so far removed that she hadn't noticed the pattern until she was doing something different. She let out a shaky breath, nervous suddenly that the others might think she was getting special treatment because of her dressing room. She was on her own, on the opposite side of the stage from the other dressing rooms. What if no one wanted to talk to her anymore? What if they-

Shaking her head, she breathed a quick prayer, and thought once more of her father's kind words.

 _I have eyes that don't look as sad today._

 _I have a smile that is not forced today._

 _I have friends and coworkers to whom I can show kindness._

o...o0o...o

The girl glanced at her phone before grabbing her folder of music and leaving the room. He watched her go.

He'd been watching her for some time.

It had been calming to watch her work, to see how determinedly she cleaned and reorganized the room. He'd made sure this room had remained unused for years. It was uniquely positioned, and had masked his comings and goings quite nicely.

It had taken more...finagling than he would have liked to get the girl this room as her own.

He smacked an open palm against the one-way glass of the mirror in frustration as he thought of the managers.

Idiots.

Half-wits.

He felt the buzz of rage that had been vibrating through him for the past week grow louder. He had built this opera from nothing.

Sales had been dropping, production value was abysmal, and cast members were jumping ship like rats to go sing _show tunes_ on _Broadway_.

And then he came along. He had given them, through hints and gentle persuasion, direction. Purpose.

And now they were leaving this magnificent monument to music. For what?

Nothing.

Obscurity.

They said retirement, but they'd forgotten that he could hear everything. He knew everything. They didn't want to be harassed any longer, they didn't want to be bullied, they didn't want to be 'puppets in the hands of an unseen madman.'

"Well. If they didn't want to be puppets maybe they shouldn't be such EMPTY-HEADED FOOLS."

He slammed his hand once more against the glass, which shook violently.

He smoothed the hair away from his forehead, his fingers brushing the cool surface of the mask.

He straightened his shirt.

They had complied in the end. They always did. He had done what he needed to to get her away from the others. Away from that filthy stagehand. He didn't need any _complications_ to his plans, and even a greasy, rat-faced scene shifter could prove a distraction.

The new managers would learn the ways of his opera soon enough. He would string them up with the wires Debienne and Poligny were leaving empty and play them like the master puppeteer he was.

In the meantime, he would listen in on the chorus. Rehearsal was well underway, and he must keep an eye on his investment. The strings were already tightening around her, and it wouldn't be long now.

Soon.

Soon.

* * *

ANYWAY. Our precious little ingenue might meet her Angel of Music in the next chapter, so come back for that, K THANX BYEEEEEE.

*Reviews always greatly appreciated, and a special thank you to ** _Igenlode Wordsmith_** for the in-depth reviews! Thanks!


	5. Letter Five - The Voice

Letter Five – The Voice

* * *

"Papa, tell me again." The little girl, all chubby limbs and bangs, stands before a harried looking man cradling a violin.

"Again? What again?" He smiles, but distractedly, focused as he is on the instrument he is oiling. He sees her draw a little closer out of the corner of his eye.

"About the angel, papa. You promised!"

"The Angel? When did I promise?"

"Papa, PLEASE," she cries dramatically, flinging out her arms and looking towards the mildewed ceiling as if God alone understands the burdens she must bare. She falls to her knees with a thud, slumps to the ground, and mumbles into the carpet, "you do this to me every night."

"Christine, don't lay on the floor like that, the carpet is filthy." He rubs the oiled cloth over the wooden body of the violin in slow, rhythmic circles. "I am almost finished, and then you shall have your story."

The little girl stands reluctantly, and balances on one foot, then the other, watching the man. He is very old, at least thirty-seven, she thinks. She is seven, and the little girl remembers her mama saying, a long time ago, that papa is as many years thirty as she is years old.

She begins to spin in a circle, like the ballerinas on TV. She loves spinning. The man looks at the violin with a critical eye, and places it and the oiling cloth carefully in the worn case. He watches the little girl spin, a bright spot of light in the cheap motel room. She doesn't know how low on money they are, or the fact that they can't afford even this room for much longer. She exists somewhere else, somewhere far away from those worries.

"Do you want to dance," he asks in mock incredulity, "or do you want to hear about the Angel?"

"FINALLY," She stops spinning and careens towards his lap, using the front of his shirt of pull herself up, "the Angel, please, if you don't mind."

"So prim and proper, älskling," he says, his swedish accent growing thicker as he prepares for the tale. She settles against his chest, and he tucks her small head under his scruffy chin. "In that case, let us begin."

"Instead of Little Lotte having blonde hair and blue eyes," the little girl says quickly, the man already nodding in agreement, "can you you make her like me?"

"A long time ago, in Sweden, where your papa and mama were born, there was a girl called Little Lotte. She had the biggest brown eyes in all the land, and straight, dark hair she liked to wear long. The head under that hair was always full, but was it full of nothing? She flitted, and danced, and twirled in the summer air. Her nature was as bright as her eyes were dark. She loved her mama and papa, was attentive to her doll, and took care of her dress, her red shoes, and her violin. But most of all, she loved going to sleep listening to the voice of the Angel of Music."

The little girl sighs happily as her eyes began to droop, and the man continues. The Angel of Music visits all great musicians, at least once. If he leans over their cradles, they become prodigies. He sometimes visits good boys and girls who learn their lessons, practice their scales, and have pure hearts...but naughty children must wait until they are quite grown, if they are visited at all. He might come when you downcast or discouraged, and sing away your sorrows with a divine voice. He is never seen, but those who hear him are said to be geniuses, making music almost too heavenly to be human.

The man looks at the little girl, now asleep in his arms, and pulls her closer. He looks around the dirty room, all water stains on the ceiling and chipping paint. He clears his throat and tries to blink away the tears in his eyes. The little girl wakes just enough to feel his kiss on her forehead as he tucks her into bed.

o...o0o...o

Christine messaged her temples and hummed the measure again. She'd been tripping over the same sixteenth note in rehearsals, and had been sitting at her dressing table, staring at the sheet music, since rehearsal ended. The slight pressure that had started in the back of her head an hour ago had blossomed into a full-fledged migraine. Exasperated, she ran her fingers through her hair and leaned back in the chair.

A yawn interrupted her contemplation of the ceiling, and she shook her head. It was late. She needed to get home, get some sleep, and get some food. Not necessarily in that order. The music could wait until morning.

The past week had been pleasant, though somewhat uneventful. It was nice, in a way. To just feel normal. She was familiar with the layout of the opera, at least the parts that pertained to her. It had been exactly three days since the last time she had gotten lost on her way to the bathroom, a fact she was very proud of, and she was starting to know the people. She was greeted in the mornings, farewelled at night, and had a nice little routine starting to settle in.

Part of that routine, apparently, was staying later than anyone. Christine was constantly one of the last people to leave, and consequently was getting to know Charlie, the night security guard quite well. He had two daughters all grown up, and cautioned her repeatedly stop going home so late.

He meant well, she knew, but if the music took her, then...well, it took her. Hours could go by, and she wouldn't notice. It reminded her of how lost papa could get in cleaning his violin, and she smiled at the memory as she shook out her ponytail and shrugged into her light jacket. She had begun working the buttons through their holes, when a soft sound caught her attention.

She paused, listening. It was...music. A song. Sweet and low. She thought she knew the voices of all the singers at this point, but this one she could not place. Maybe one of the baritones had stayed late? She walked into the hallway and headed toward the stage, wanting to know to whom the voice belonged. As she headed down the hallway, the voice grew quieter. She paused. The someone was still singing, but now it sounded far away. She turned back towards her dressing room. The sound grew louder. Confused, she turned and took a few steps toward the stage. The sound grew quieter.

Moving toward her dressing room, she could no longer deny that the song was coming from within. The closer she drew to her door, the louder the voice became. She'd never heard anything like it before. Her heartbeat quickened, her eyes felt heavy, and her body wanted to swim in the beautiful pool of sound. She walked through the door, and it was like walking into honey. Golden and thick. Her limbs grew languid, her eyes shut, and she stayed.

o...o0o...o

It was all going perfectly, as all his plans did. There she was, just on the other side of the mirror, her face upturned and her eyes closed, lost in listening to the song. His song.

He hadn't known what route to take, what plans to lay to lead her to him. He wanted, no needed, to train her. To mold her voice. The thought of it was a flowering vine taking root, impossible to eradicate, too beautiful to ignore. He knew, he _knew,_ that if he polished her, she could shine. She had promise. She had potential. After spending hours watching and listening he heard what had caught his ear in auditions.

He would scoff if he wasn't singing. He had written that she could aspire to bit parts. Bit parts! Who was the empty-headed fool now? There was, in her tone and the quality of her voice, something compelling and pure. Something left unsullied by years of Julliard training. Something her knew he could shape into greatness.

She had a _passion_ for music as well. A true connection. Not just a love for music, not just a dedication to her craft. No, she immersed herself in music, she lost herself in song, almost as nearly as he did. She stayed later than everyone, constantly practicing. He had known she would respond to his voice as she was responding now. He just had not known how or when to use his voice until a few days earlier.

Rehearsal had ended, and the chorus was breaking off into clusters. He moved silently above them in the flies, following Christine until she joined that Giry woman's daughter and some of the other dancers.

"...and then, the closet door creaked open. I squeezed my eyes shut till I fell asleep, or till morning, whichever came first!" The dancer Lyla Jammes gesticulated wildly to the laughing crowd around her. "And when I woke up, I saw that the Headless Horseman had not, in fact, taken up residence in my closet. Rather, it was just my winter coat and my imagination. That's what you get, I guess, when you grow up in a town actually named Sleepy Hollow."

The girls all laughed, Christine included. She laughed like it surprises her, like she had forgotten she could. Her face looked so open, so honest when she laughed.

Since when did he care about other people's laughter? Laughter was, in his opinion, groteseque. Guffawing, braying like donkeys. All teeth and harsh sounds.

Her laugh was alright, he supposed. All things considered.

"Christine," Meg Giry asked "Do you have any ghost stories?"

"Oh, um...yeah?" She glanced up in thought, and he stayed still. Motion gets noticed. She did not see him. "But of course, I can't think of any right now."

"Come on, you have to have at least one!"

"Well, ok, it isn't actually a ghost story, but it's all that's coming to mind at the moment. My dad always used to tell me about the Angel of Music…"

There it was. The perfect plan. Everything clicking, everything falling into place. The Angel of Music lit a fire of song in the chest of the chosen, and she was his chosen. He had the dressing room. He had his voice. He would be her angel.

Now it was all going perfectly, as all his plans did. There she was, on the other side of the mirror, trusting his song. Trusting him. He raised a hand to the glass.

"Christine."

Her eyes popped open, the spell broken. He hadn't meant to speak her name, there was a lull in the song, it had slipped out, and now she was frightened. He could see it in the way her eyes darted, the way her shoulders hunched, the way her body seemed to ask how it got there. She grabbed her bags, and ran.

He followed the sound of her flight, slipped silently through the spaces behind the walls. He threw his voice, made it bounce off the walls around her, calling her name. He had to craft the illusion of the celestial, the supernatural. He heard her slam into the push bar and crash into the night. He wrapped his hand around a rope, cut the anchoring sandbag, and hurtled up a shaft. Deftly climbing a few rungs to a roof access hatch, he had burst out on the roof. She must have paused at some point, because she was not as far down the street as he had anticipated.

"Goodbye." He threw his voice to her, unsure if it would make it to her ears, or if the wind would sweep the farewell out across the Manhattan skyline.

o...o0o...o

Christine looked back at the opera. Had she heard something? Had it followed her? Shaking her head, she ran a few steps, then paused. Took a few more steps. Stopped. She couldn't think straight. Should she call the cops? And say what? A voice followed her down a hall? That would go over well. She didn't know if she should head home, or wait until she knew she wasn't being followed. The August air was warm against her skin, and her light jacket felt too heavy now.

She spied a cafe and ducked into it. It was practically empty at this point, and she ordered a tea as she attempted to catch her breath. Waiting was the smartest option, she decided, if there even was a smartest option in this scenario. She didn't want who, or whatever, the voice was to follow her home. So she nursed her tea in a booth facing the window, watching for...something.

Could a voice that perfect, that beautiful, be bad? Was that possible? And yet it was all so unexplainable, so surreal. She couldn't figure it out. After fifteen uneventful minutes, she went outside and hailed a cab. She'd splurge. The subway was out of the question tonight. All the way home, her mind replayed the scene over and over again. The voice, the way it drew her in, the way it seemed to emerge from the bones of the opera itself. Everywhere and nowhere.

"Oh, Christine! You're finally home," Mamma Valerius called from the couch, "come join me. I'm watching the most delightful documentary about ghosts in...what's wrong?"

Christine dropped onto the couch next to her and was quiet for a long time. Mamma shut the TV off.

"Christine? What is it, sweetheart?" Mamma asked, concerned. Christine took a deep breath.

"Something...happened."

* * *

And you thought you had seen the last of me. HA. HA HA. Like a Phoenix from the ashes, I RISE.

Don't forget, this fic is a companion piece to my web-series The Private Letters Of Christine Daae. So if you haven't checked that out, I'd say it's worth it. I'm a bit biased, but I think its fun. PLUS if you watch it, and read it, you'll have the FULL SCOPE of the story I was crafting, so like...yeah.


	6. Letter Six - New Friends

Letter Six - New Friends

* * *

Christine turned off the camera and hurried out of the dressing room after Meg. She tossed her purse over her shoulder as the two kept pace with one another.

"Sorry again for crashing your video like that," Meg apologized, "I didn't realize you had anything going on or I would have waited."

"Oh, no worries – " Christine started.

"QUIET ON THE SET, PLEASE, QUIET ON THE SET!" Meg cut in, mimicking the voice of an old-timey director. She stopped and looked at the ground with a dramatic sigh, "and I've just interrupted you again."

"It's fine!" Christine laughed goodnaturedly, feeling more lighthearted than she had in weeks. Months. She was dizzy with something that danced along the edges of joy and mania. "Now tell me more about this jazz club."

"Excellent," Meg's eyes lit up as they exited the opera and were swept up the pedestrian stream, "I'm thinking *theme-night.* The twenties. You don't work at an opera as long as my mother has without inheriting some sweet costume cast-offs. We can just head straight to my place, some of the girls are meeting us…"

Christine's brain was spinning, bright little spots of light and swirls of golden fog clouded her mind. Little Lotte's head was was always full, but was it full of nothing?

He had spoken to her.

Her heart sped up at the thought. Good things, so many of them, and all at once. Here she was, laughing and climbing the stairs towards Meg's and her mother's eighth floor walk-up, preparing for an evening of flapper dresses and new friends and good music and _he had spoken to her._

"Mom! I'm home," Meg called out as they entered the apartment. When there was no response, She shrugged and began pulling Christine down the hall, "huh, she must still be at work. Whatever. I'm thinking hair and makeup first. This way, to the costume closet!"

The two tried out various hairstyles and painted their lips in cupid-bows of red as the other girls arrived. The apartment hummed with the warm, hairspray-scented energy of girls getting ready together. Christine fell into the feeling happily, giving into the inviting warmth as a fellow chorus member zipped up her black, beaded flappers dress and one of the dancers adjusted a glittering headband across her brow.

"Does this place require costumes?" She called to Meg.

"Nope, I just think this is fun!" Meg said, flipping a feather boa over her shoulders with the practiced drama of a born performer.

As the girls filed noisily down the stairs and into the waiting ubers, Christine's only regret was that she hadn't gotten to vent this week. In just a month and a half, she had come to rely on these video letters, and Meg's interruption left her feeling off kilter. The videos gave her a space to be open, to speak, in a time when she felt her friendships too new and fragile to hold the weight of real, honest conversation.

She watched as Meg chatted with the Uber driver, causing the car to erupt in laughter as she spun a tale about getting her driver lost on her first, disastrous, Uber ride. One day, Christine knew, she'd have people other than Mamma Valerius to trust. _But not quite yet,_ she thought, _and not about this._

She wasn't sure if a miracle had occurred or if she, Christine Daae, had gone absolutely insane.

 _He had spoken to her._

o...o0o...o

Christine had buried the Angel of Music when she buried her father.

Some things were simply too painful to think about.

She didn't think about The Angel of Music the way she didn't think about her father. The great, yawning chasm, just to the left of normal. A butterfly alighting on stone, she would bump against memories, her wings would glance lightly against veins of what-used-to-be, and she dared not rest for long. Until one afternoon, when Mamma Valerius presented Christine with a tiny pair of paper angel wings, drawn all over with shaky, childish music notes in pink crayon and gold glitter.

"Do you remember making these?" Mamma V asked Christine, who could only nod in return; the wave of nostalgia and sorrow sweeping any words off her tongue . She touched the edge of the wings lightly and glitter flaked onto the tips of her fingers.

She set the wings on her nightstand, and woke the next morning from sad, sweet dreams.

A few days later, she came upon a knot of people after rehearsal, huddled backstage and sharing ghost stories. Not a single, Scandinavian story came to mind. Years of her father telling her dark stories of the north, and she could only think of the Angel. Not the De Underjordiske, lost souls who live underground and call for passing humans to join them. Not Pesta, who ushered in illness with her rake and broom. Not Draugen, the huge, horrifying, ship-sinking, seaweed-covered ghost of a man lost at sea. None of them. Only the Angel of Music and the whisper of a promise.

Then there was night she had come home, shaking and unsettled, and told Mamma V of the voice that had called to her in her dressing room. The impossible, beautiful voice that knew her name.

"Christine," Mamma said, turning off whatever ghost-themed documentary she'd been burning through that day, "you don't think…"

Christine swiped at her runny nose with the sleeve of her sweater, surprised to find her cheeks wet. How long had she been crying?

"Think what, Mamma?"

"I used to hear the two of you talking, you and your father. Toward the end, before things got really bad, before we realized...I think he knew before the rest of us. I know what he told you."

"Told me…?" Christine loved the woman, but she needed to be spoon fed whatever revelation Mamma Valerius had stumbled upon. She was incapable of connecting any dots that night.

"He told you that when he got to heaven, he would send you –"

"...the Angel of Music." She and Christine finished together. It came rushing back to Christine, everything, the precious ore in the veins of the cavern. The stories, her father's promise, all the times she had curled up next to him and asked to hear about the Angel of Music. Her desire to hear the story had dwindled as she got into high school and later college, but every now and then, he would look at her with twinkle in his eye.

"Little Lotte's head was always full, but was it full of nothing?"

Hope, that persistent, stubborn little pilot light, flared inside her chest. _What if?_ It was stupid. It was crazy. _What if?_ Her father was gone. The Angel of Music was a fairytale. _What if?_

The rest of the week passed in a blur of music and fevered listening. Christine lingered in her dressing room in silence each night, straining for even the faintest rustle of, well, anything. Sunday she went to church with Mamma, but could hardly focus on the sermon. Weren't there all sorts of stories of God sending angels to people? Joan of Arc. The Apostle Paul. The women at Jesus' grave on the third day. She'd heard of others too, modern day miracles.

Could it be possible that God had listened to her father's prayers, and sent the Angel of Music to her? _Lord, if this is from You, please make it clear. Please...let it be from You,_ she prayed. Her spirit remained unsettled within her. She pushed the feeling aside.

Monday passed without incident, a full week of silence. She headed home for the night, her heart a ship on uncertain seas. Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe she was going crazy.

 _What if?_

Christine entered her dressing room the next night weary after a long rehearsal, and frustrated at that unflappable pilot light inside her. She straightened the sheafs of music in her portfolio. She set up her camera, but didn't sit to film. She dusted her shelves. She tapped together the pair of small silver egg cups to hear their bright _Ting!_

She was alive with sparks of anxious energy and small jitters of anger. She was angry? Yes! She was angry! She couldn't quite pinpoint the source, but the sucking, disappointing silence of the walls around her seemed a likely candidate.

 _Fine. FINE!_ She thought. _Let's lean into it, shall we? Let's give full on insanity a whirl. And if nothing comes of this, SO BE IT._

"Um...Your...Celestial-ness?" She said softly. Nothing. She cleared her throat and said the first thing that came to mind. "Uh, Holy Angel...heaven..blessed?"

Fantastic! She was quoting Faust to her walls. Soon she'd be tossing salt over her left shoulder and carrying around a lucky charm like Mamma Valerius.

She raked her hair out of her face and a bitter laugh barked out of her. So much for what if. She angrily tied her hair in a ponytail, and turned towards the camera. Might as well document her lapse of sanity. For science. Surely psychologists across the world would be interested in dissecting the thought process behind –

Someone started singing.

Christine spun towards the mirror, and the laugh that spilled from her lips was the antithesis of the one that came before. It sounded like discovery and disbelief and joy. A miner who struck gold. A scientist exclaiming _Eureka!_

"Hello?" She called, tentatively. The song continued a few moments more, before fading to pause.

"Hello, Christine." The Voice. Caramel and sunset and pools of clear gold. Christine's breathing bordered on hyperventilation.

"Uh, hi! You're...here. You're here! You're, uh...you're real?" Her voice went up like a question.

"Yes, Christine. I'm here. I'm real." The pool of clear gold was tinged with amusement.

A strangled, happy sound burst from Christine and she clapped her hands over her mouth. Spinning abruptly away from the mirror, she took a few steps towards the door, then spun right back around and strode right up to the long, elegant mirror.

"You're not just someone hiding behind my mirror?" She asked determinedly, tapping smartly on the glass with one finger to emphasize her point.

"No. No. I am not just someone hiding behind your mirror." The sunset said, first by the door, then from the chair at her vanity, then from behind the changing screen. She turned to follow the voice as it spoke, completing the circle as the voice swelled on every side and sucked back towards the mirror, slipping past her like a caress. " I merely thought it would comfort you to hear me from a single point of reference."

"...oh. Oh, uh, so... If you're not...If you aren't…" Christine took a shuddering breath, and squared her shoulders. "Who are you?"

"Christine," the Voice said gently, "I'm disappointed. Don't you know me?"

A million different thoughts swirled through her head, bible verses, her father's voice, her own unsettled prayer on Sunday. She shook her head, trying to push through to some sort of conclusion.

 _What if?_

It was on the tip of her tongue. She had promised herself she would ask. She had promised herself that the next time she heard the voice, she would ask, outright, _are you the Angel of Music?_ The listening silence had grown long. The words formed on her lips.

"Christine," the Voice said, gently cutting off her unspoken question, "I must bid you goodnight."

Already he sounded further away. A humming sort of melody drifted through the air.

"Will you come back?" She called, voice frantic at the edges.

"Only if you learn your lessons, practice your scales, and have a pure heart…" The Voice, distant but tinged with warm laughter, whispered around her before fading into silence.

Christine put one hand to her forehead and stared down at the floor, processing. A full minute passed before she moved a limb. Her actions seemed distant and far away, her mind autumn and her thoughts falling leaves. When next she fully came to herself she was sitting in a crowded booth in a jazz club with seven other girls costumed, as she was, in full flapper regalia.

A waiter had just left, his tray held high, after depositing a still flaming sample of...something.

"Langue de bœuf la flambée!" Meg laughed over the upbeat jazz, blew out the flame, and pushed the dish towards Lyla. "Beef tongue flambé. Take it away, lil' Jammes!"

"Meg, don't call me that!" Lyla said, as she adventurously grabbed a sliver.

"Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!" The girls chanted, pounding their fists rhythmically on the table as Lyla adventurously grabbed a sliver. Christine joined in and cheered with the rest as Lyla chewed and flashed them a thumbs up. She stood and bowed before them with an elegant flourish and held out a hand.

"Anyone care to dance?" Lyla asked. All eight poured out of the crowded booth and trouped onto the dance floor. The dancers tried to teach the chorus girls how to Charleston, and the chorus girls tried to learn. It went rather poorly. All agreed that they would not be switching roles anytime soon.

The night wound to a close, and Christine hugged Meg and thanked her for the invite as the uber rolled to a stop. She waved and smiled at the retreating taillights, and turned to unlock the door.

The excitement inside her burned so hot it almost felt like anxiety. It glittered, refracting and reflecting off of itself. The house was quiet, Mamma Valerius already asleep. Christine slipped out of the flapper dress and laid it on a chair. She would return it to Meg tomorrow. She pulled on her soft cotton pajama pants and a ribbed tank top before padding into the bathroom on bare feet. The water was cool as she washed her face. As she brushed her teeth, she realized, maybe, it was a good thing her letter had been interrupted. It was still too fresh, too shiny, too recent to say out loud. Maybe later, when she was more certain. Maybe later, when this felt less like a dream.

* * *

Woohoo! New Chapter! I also went through and fixed some of the spelling erros and such I'd missed in previous chapters. I got the stuff about Swedish monsters from an article titled 10 Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore on the website Listverse.

Thanks for reading, please review!


	7. Letter Seven - Prima Donna Drama

Letter Seven - Prima Donna Drama

Christine gazed into the shadowy flies far above her and sighed, adjusting the sweater she was using as a pillow. She'd been in the same spot for what felt like hours, but didn't have the will to sit up or change positions. None of them did. The rest of the chorus was sprawled around her in various forms of repose, discreetly scrolling through their phones or reading. Some flipped through their music, but no one made a sound.

No one wanted to draw her attention.

Staging had begun for their first production. This meant full cast rehearsal, which meant...the prima donna. Christine sighed again and rubbed a hand over her face before checking her phone for the time. One hour left.

The chorus had enjoyed a productive morning blocking several scenes that didn't include any of the major players. Christine could never get used to the thrill of singing onstage, and the force of her excitement came like a shaft of sunlight in an attic window, brilliant, golden, and illuminating. She'd missed this.

The cast had broken for lunch, and returned at the end of the hour to find the leads warming up around the piano. Reyer gathered everyone to center stage, gave a rundown for the rest of the afternoon, and went through a brief warm up. Everything went splendidly for about twenty minutes, and then . . .

"It appears our prima donna has an issue," Reyer said, bringing the music to a halt with a wave of his hand. "What is it now, Miss Carlotta?"

"The issue, Mr. Reyer," Lana Carlotta bit out each syllable, "is that after weeks of rehearsal you refuse to cue me in on time."

"I refuse to cue you in?"

"Yes. I'm supposed to make my entrance - "

"Six measures in, on C, as it is written in the music, and as we've been rehearsing."

Lana stiffened at the interruption and shot the conductor a look so withering it stilled the rest of the company. A hush descended.

"I know what we've been rehearsing, and I know when I start singing, but as I have made perfectly clear, I should be on the stage on the first measure. My character should work the stage, garner attention, so when I start singing on the sixth measure the audience knows where to look!"

"This is Faust, Miss Carlotta," Reyer said wearily, "not Carmen. Marguerite is meant to be modest, there's no reason for you to 'work the stage.' Everyone resume places."

The company rearranged themselves into their starting positions. Christine held a cornucopia filled with fake produce aloft and straightened her shoulders. The music began, the chorus still somewhat stilted as they tried to create the illusion of a bustling town square. Carlotta glowered offstage until her cue and then burst from the wings, her opening notes fortissimo and decidedly immodest.

"Stop, stop, stop," Mr. Reyer said with a dramatic flourish. "Miss Carlotta."

"Yes, Maestro?" Lana replied, all ice.

"Do you need a review of your character?"

"Oh, no, I think I understand her quite well."

"Then why, may I ask, are you thundering onstage as though she is a Viking warrior?" Reyer asked. Lana did not respond, merely crossed her arms. Reyer sighed. "Everyone take five while I refresh our prima donna on her opening measures."

Five minutes had turned to fifteen. Fifteen minutes to thirty. There were a few times everyone stood up and actually took their places, but they never seemed to make it past the first measure. A solid hour and a half must have passed since the last time everyone had been called to their places, and Christine and the rest of the chorus had slowly slumped into their current positions of desperate restlessness.

The shadows were thick above her, and the sound of Carlotta's ongoing argument with Reyer buzzed in the background. Music played in the back of her mind, and Christine closed her eyes to remember it more clearly, and just as quickly veered away from the memory.

She still couldn't be sure if The Voice was real, and she didn't want to contemplate the consequences of it being otherwise. For now...she was still deciding, and she ignored the memory of The Voice singing again and again in her head.

Opening her eyes, Christine traced the various ropes leading from platform to platform, seeing nothing but her own thoughts, until movement captured her attention. Her eyes snapped to a dark corner where the shadows were deepest, and tried to pinpoint the source of the movement. A loose corner of a backdrop maybe? A curtain? She raised herself to her elbows and narrowed her eyes. She could almost make out the shape of a –

"All right, everyone! I'd like to run through this scene with the full company at least once before we leave for the day," Reyer called, clapping to draw the attention of the now lethargic cast. "Places everyone!"

Christine rolled onto her stomach and pushed up onto her knees. Grabbing her cornucopia, she stood and moved to her spot. The music in her mind matched the opening chords and she remembered to apply her new breathing techniques, surprised again that such simple instructions could bring such change. She let the music take her, still stumbling a bit in her choreography, but more confident than she had felt in weeks.

Christine's voice rang out in unison with the other sopranos, and she let it soar. Carlotta's head snapped in her direction for a moment, her gaze drifting across the line of sopranos before locking onto Christine. Christine smiled at the prima donna nervously before spinning clockwise in time with the other chorus members as the song grew particularly boisterous. Christine glanced back to see Carlotta still staring at her suspiciously, but shook it off. The company sounded well, and she cheered with them as the song finished and everyone exited to the wings. She walked quickly towards her dressing room, eager to see if she would hear him again.

o...o0o...o

"Christine, could you pass the salt please, sweetie?" Mamma Valerius asked.

"Oh, sure," Christine mumbled around a mouthful of chicken parmesan, and pushed the shaker across the table.

"Is your chicken parm good?"

"Delicious as always, Mamma. How do you do it?" Christine responded smiling. This conversation happened frequently.

"Well, my dear, first I start by putting a big pot of water on the stove. Then, once that's at a nice, roiling boil, I turn the heat off, pick up the phone, and call Cafe Fiorello."

They both laughed, and the conversation settled into companionable silence. Mamma Valerius looked at Christine intently.

"You seem to be doing well lately," Mamma V. said after a moment.

"Thanks, Mamma. It's been a...good couple of weeks."

"Mmmhh," Mamma made a noncomittal noise in her throat. She looked at Christine in that way she had, as if she knew Christine wasn't telling the whole truth. "They've been keeping you later and later for rehearsals."

"You know how it is, opening night approaching…" Christine said, and Mamma Valerius seemed to accept that as an answer. She smiled conspiratorially and leaned towards Christine.

"So...did you ever hear the voice again? In your dressing room? The Angel of Music?"

"Ha. Haha," Christine's laugh seemed somewhat forced. "Trust me Mamma, if I hear the actual Angel of Music, you're the first person I'll tell."

o...o0o...o

"No, no, NO!" The sound of fluttering paper followed the shriek as Lana Carlotta hurled her music folder at the back of the piano. "¿Cómo te atreves? ¡Eres estúpido! ¿Cómo se supone que debo trabajar en estas condiciones?"

The piano cut off with a discordant clang, and the chorus went silent. Christine clenched her jaw and looked at the floor. She'd been like this everyday so far. Reyer sighed heavily from the pit.

"What seems to be the problem, Miss Carlotta?" He asked drily.

"Well, the pianist is atrocious –"

"Fred's worked here for years, and I'll correct him if he needs it."

"– the chorus is extremely off key! Especially the sopranos –"

"The chorus is fine."

"And that girl," Carlotta hissed as if she didn't hear him, and stabbed a finger towards where Lyla Jammes stretched, "is standing in my light."

Lyla looked up, shocked, and the way she pointed to herself and mouthed 'who, me?' was almost comical. Meg swooped toward the dancer and ushered her further upstage, out of the line of fire.

"We aren't even using that part of the stage," Christine muttered to herself. One of the sopranos smirked, and Christine inhaled sharply, realizing she'd spoken out loud.

Carlotta's eyes snapped towards the huddle of sopranos. Her eyes narrowed on Christine, and the diva took a step towards the group, but the tapping of Reyer's baton drew her attention.

"Alright, places everyone. From the top, Miss Carlotta, if you are quite finished with your tantrum."

The entire auditorium stilled. The dancers. The chorus. The housekeepers sweeping between the seats.

"Tantrum?" Carlotta said, quiet and dangerous.

"Yes, tantrum. I will not have my rehearsals prolonged with your childish behavior and finger pointing any longer."

"You can't talk to me like that."

"Oh, I think I'll speak in any manner I deem appropriate. I have directed this opera since before you were a chorus girl, and I will not tolerate this behavior any longer. Your insufferability has increased with each passing season, and I will not to hesitate to pass this information onto the managers –"

"The managers?" Carlotta barked with a laugh, and began stalking towards Reyer. Her long, dark hair slipped over one shoulder of her sleek pant suit. "What are you going to do? Tell on me? Give me detention?"

"If you continue to disrupt my –"

"Who do you think was a bigger draw for our new managers, Mr. Reyer? Me? Or you?"

Reyer did not answer, merely gazed up at the angry woman now looming above him.

"Me. They chose this opera because of me. Because of my name, my talent, and my connections," Carlotta continued. She was quiet, cold. It was worse than her screaming. "Which one of us is on track to EGOT, Reyer? Me? Or You?"

"No one is denying that you are talented, Miss Carlotta –"

"Yes. That's right. I am talented. I bring in the crowds. I bring in the money. It's my face on the posters, not the face of some tired old man."

A stunned Reyer watched as she turned, strode back across the stage, and picked her up her black Balenciaga bag.

"Who do you think the managers would be more willing to lose, Reyer? Me? Or you?" Carlotta leveled a final glare at the director before she turned and strode into the wings. "Think about that next time you want to comment on my 'behavior.'"

o...o0o...o

The week began to follow a pattern. A productive morning, followed by an unproductive afternoon. Carlotta wasted time, the cast grumbled, and then they all went home. By Friday, in spite of everything, Christine could see the show beginning to come together. There were still snarls to work out, but with three weeks until opening night, and nearly four until the Farewell Gala for the managers, the company was on track.

In the mornings, when it was just the chorus, Christine loved being at the Opera. She loves the singing, the dancing, the sense of camaraderie. She began to feel she was truly part of the company.

In the morning.

Then, lunch would end, as all lunches must, and it would be time for the full cast to rehearse. Christine considered herself a patient person. She had her off days, of course, but she tried to look at things from both sides, be understanding. Anger fit her like an uncomfortably tight dress, and she didn't like to wear it often.

Lana Carlotta, it seemed, was determined to be Christine's personal tight dress tailor. The woman seemed to peddle anger, and a tiny, little fire of annoyance built inside of Christine as the week went on. Everytime Carlotta opened her mouth, another log was added to the growing flame.

The prima donna split her time equally between singing and critique, and Christine was getting tired of both. It wasn't that Christine disliked Carlotta's voice. Her voice was gorgeous. Big. Powerful. The woman dominated the stage when she was singing, but dominating was all she ever did. She didn't perform so much as strut, warping the role to match her own personality. Even pianissimo, everything thing Lana Carlotta did was loud.

Christine could have accepted a flat performance. It would have been fine. It would have been tolerable. It would have been a quirk if Carlotta hadn't been so...so...infuriating? Rude? Arrogant? It was Christine's first season at the opera, and she knew she had no right to complain. Maybe this was just how it was everywhere. Christine couldn't help but imagine, though, how good the company might be if everyone wasn't worried about angering the lead soprano.

The diva had repeatedly interrupted the morning's practice with her comments and corrections.

"Hmm, it seems like something off key is coming from the soprano section, doesn't it, Reyer?"

"Don't you think the chorus should be a bit louder, Reyer?"

"It seems like someone stage right is throwing off the melody."

Christine had been standing stage right when Carlotta threw out that particular accusation, and her little fire of annoyance was being threatened by lapping waves of dread. All the woman's nitpicking, all her little comments had seemed to be aimed in Christine's direction. Christine tried to shake the feeling. She moved to her starting position, and waited for the music to start. She hadn't done anything to Lana Carlotta! She hadn't been rude, she hadn't gossiped. There was plenty of talk in the wings to join in on, but Christine did her best to steer clear of it. Christine's step faltered as she remembered the retort that had slipped out in response to Carlotta's rant about Lyla earlier in the week. Had Carlotta heard her? Was that what this was?

Pushing the thought from her mind, she stood straighter to give her diaphragm more support. You have to push from the abdomen for the strongest notes, he'd said. If he had said it. If she wasn't crazy. Christine spun once with the rest of the chorus line and released a long, pure note. This was one of her favorite measures in the opera, and she let herself enjoy the moment. Too soon, the music moved on, and she joined hands with one of the tenors to promenade down the stage. As he whirled her stage left, Christine made sudden and terrible eye contact with Lana Carlotta. The diva had come to a complete stop and was glaring at Christine with menace. Christine's voice died in her chest, and she could sense the rest of the company coming to faltering stops around her as Carlotta's cue came and went unsung. A bass on the other side of the stage tripped as the alto in his arms went still, and the note he had been singing went sour.

"Mr. Reyer!" Carlotta cried shrilly, silencing the orchestration and the remaining singers. The diva stalked towards Christine like a jungle cat. "There it is again. Did you hear it? I've been saying someone has been off all day."

Reyer said nothing, but his shoulders fell. The tenor holding Christine's hand inched away from her, and Christine suddenly found herself isolated from the safety of the herd. Carlotta stopped in front of her, never breaking eye contact.

"I think I found our culprit." Carlotta said, gently placing a hand on Christine's shoulder.

"Really, Miss Carlotta," Reyes hastened to say, but there wasn't much heart in it. "Steven tripped, a simple mistake, and its –"

"No," Carlotta interrupted, her voice quiet and saccharine. "That wasn't Steven. I think it was this little songbird. You're new, aren't you? What's your name?"

"Uh, I'm…" Christine stammered, confused and more than a little suspicious. "My name is Christine Daae?"

"Well, Christine," Carlotta leaned in as if speaking to a child, "next time, try singing on key."

"But," Christine said quietly, stunned, but Lana Carlotta had already turned and sauntered toward center stage. "...I'm a soprano? That wasn't even –"

"From the top then, Maestro?" Carlotta asked Reyer loudly, shooting a smirk over her shoulder at the still stammering Christine. Reyer looked at Christine sadly, but the fight had left him. He tapped his baton.

"If my diva commands."

o...o0o...o

He stormed up the tunnel, his keen eyes carving the path out of the shadows, but his body knew the way already. He let his legs take control and allowed himself to fume unhindered.

That harpy.

That shrew.

She had been tolerable . . . until she won that Grammy. Then, she had been a nuisance . . . until her bit part on some movie won her an Oscar. Then, she had been insufferable until, oh blessed relief, she'd gone off to star in some Broadway spectacular. He had thought he was rid of her, but no. She was back with her Tony and her complete inability to understand her own mediocrity. Worse than that, she was getting in his way.

The girl didn't trust him yet. Not fully, not the way he wanted her to. It was only a matter of time, of course. He could sense her turning toward her 'Angel,' and that was good. It was necessary.

The only way he could shape her voice was if she gave it to him completely.

They'd been making progress. It had only been a few days, and already her tone had improved. Her confidence. Before, she had let herself get lost in the background, but now she let the music take her. Hesitantly, of course, but there were flashes of brilliance.

It was those flashes, like shiny objects to a squawking crow, that drew that woman towards his project. His investment.

Lana Carlotta was walking a dangerous line.

The girl had been doing fine, well even, but she had begun to retreat inside herself again. Ever since the Prima Donna had singled her out and blamed her for that bass' mistake, he could see the retreat in her body language during rehearsals. He could see the retreat in her eyes when she listened to him through the mirror. Moreover, he could see her begin to doubt the Angel, and that was unacceptable.

Discord, missteps, the occasional wrong note were annoyances, to be sure, but they to be expected at this stage in rehearsal. That arrogant toad had begun blaming his pupil for all of them. Inane, idiotic, claims that even a child could see were the petty jabs of a jealous woman. And Reyer, that coward, stood by and said nothing.

The glow from her dressing room soothed him as he neared, and he exhaled. He would deal with Lana Carlotta. He would deal with Reyer. First, though, he needed to reassure his student.

The dressing room was empty, and his internal clock told him that rehearsal wouldn't be ending for another half hour. He reached above his head and pressed a small button. A seam shot down the mirror, and with a hiss the two halves of the glass swung towards him.

He stepped into the dressing room and breathed deeply. He liked how the room smelled now. It had lost the smell of dust and closed up places, and in its place there was something sweet and open. Alive. The air and apples and sunshine.

He walked the perimeter of the room, so changed now from the musty storage space it had been. He ran a finger along the dresser. No dust. She kept the room more or less clean. He could see, from the care she took of her music and her space, that she understood the very great value of the opportunity she had been given. He picked up the two silver egg cups and tapped them together as he had seen her do. The *TING* sounded throughout the room, and he almost smiled.

He silenced the resonating hum with the touch of a finger to each cup, and drifted toward the vanity. Her purse was open, and he rifled through the bag with a practiced efficiency. The contents of a woman's purse always told an interesting story.

Gum, charger, a travel bible, headphones. A few loose receipts floated around the bag, and at the bottom was a library book of "true accounts of angels on earth." He did smile then. Her wallet contained the usual debit and credit cards, her I.D., MetroCard, a few ones dollar bill, and some pennies. Tucked under the I.D. was a small photo with worn edges. A somewhat haggard looking man and a young girl at the beach. Her eyes were large in a face almost too hollow for a child, and the man's face was lined from hunger. The two were smiling, however, almost laughing as they held shells out towards the camera. He flipped the photo over, and saw in looping script:

"Our first summer with Gustave and Christine at Port Jarvis. – 2001"

Tucking the photo back into place, he commited the name to memory. Gustave Daae. He had done a cursory search into his student's background, of course, but it would be useful to research her family history further.

He placed the purse where it had been, and surveyed the rest of the vanity. A camera sat atop an unsteady looking pile of two thick books and a battered, white cardboard storage box. Oh yes, Tuesday. The day she filmed.

They were very informative, these "letters" as she called them. He had seen her film a few before he had chosen to reveal himself, or more accurately, his voice. How peculiar to share something so intimate with the world. The views were minimal, of course, she didn't try to advertise, but the videos were public. She was utterly unmasked, and it was fascinating.

After watching her film, he'd been curious to see if she did anything with the footage. He had found her YouTube channel with ease, but did not subscribe. He had not yet discovered if she was the inquisitive sort, nor had he gained an accurate assessment of her intelligence, but she didn't seem like a complete idiot, and he couldn't risk her making any connections.

A mysterious voice claiming to be an angel could be believable . . . to a person of the right temperament and with the appropriate persuasive elements.

He had made grown men believe in ghosts, after all.

But a mysterious voice, and an anonymous subscription to her video diary? Too many coincidences.

No, he wouldn't risk that. Not in this delicate stage of the process.

He moved behind the camera, a somewhat outdated handheld model, and flipped open the small screen. The gold curtain dominated the frame, but the chair she usually sat in had been tucked out of the way.

Utterly unmasked. He'd never encountered someone so open.

Voices began to drift down the hall. Rehearsal must have ended sooner than scheduled.

"Don't worry about it, Christine," he heard that Giry woman's daughter say on the other side of the door. "No one is taking anything she says seriously."

His student's muffled response sounded . . . more irate than downtrodden. Was it possible? This could prove interesting.

The girl was making her goodbyes to the dancer, so he pushed record on the camera before swiftly stepping back through the mirror. The panes of glass swung silently back together behind him.

With a soft, hydraulic hiss, the seam between the panes vanished, leaving no trace, just as the door opened.


	8. Letter Eight -The Boy with the Red Scarf

Letter Eight - The Boy with the Red Scarf

DISCLAIMER: Apparently, College Me got WAY TOO EXCITED about there being a town in New York with a two-worded name that starts with the letter P. What better place to be the modern day, American equivalent of Perros-Guirec than a town called Port Jervis? I was like "Well if it has PORT in the name, then it MUST be near the ocean." That was my reasoning, I guess. UNTIL, that is, I was re-researching this bad boy to get an idea of what the beach was like for this chapter, and it turns out Port Jervis is like, super duper far from the ocean, surrounded by land, and it's beaches are like...on the banks of a large river or some tiny lakes. THAT is not what I was going for, and I am VERY SURPRISED that I let this kind of slovenly research pass. The little BOY RUNS INTO THE SEA, IT HAS TO BE THE SEA. WHAT MAP WERE YOU LOOKING AT, 21 YEAR OLD ME?

ANYWAY, I am taking the creative liberty of acting like Port Jervis is, in fact, by the sea. I assure you, no one is more disappointed in this development than me.

* * *

The air smells like sunscreen and saltwater and sand, and the girl breathes it in deeply as she pedals down the beach. The last vestiges of sophomore year fall away as the wind combs its fingers through her hair and the freedom that comes with summer vacation finally settles into her bones.

She loves coming here, loves the beach cottage they rent with Mamma and Dr. Valerius, loves camping with her father, loves the sea and the music and the sun. They arrived yesterday, and she has taken the first opportunity to bike down to the beach. Papa was tuning his violin when she left, but she knows he is likely napping by now. The man loves to nap. Tonight, after dinner, they would plan where they would sing over the summer. Mamma jokingly calls it the "Daae Summer Tour."

The girl smiles and leans left to follow the curve of the beach sidewalk. She bikes at a brisk pace, the sky overcast and the beach nearly empty. The wind is stronger closer to the water, and the scarf she wear blows, gauzy and red, about her face. She brushes the cloth aside, then brushes it aside again. Then again. She steers the bike one handed in an attempt to keep the scarf in check, but her tread slows and the bike begins to wobble. She releases the scarf to steady the bike and with almost purposeful grace, the scarf jumps to cover her face completely. Blind to all but red, she grabs the handles with both hands as the bike careens onto the sand. She squeezes the breaks, and the bike grinds to a halt.

She wrestles the scarf away from her face and unwinds the cloth from around her neck. Her fingers holding the cloth loosen, for just a moment, and the breeze snatches it from her hand. Her mouth is a small "o" of surprise, transfixed momentarily as the cloth, like a bird or a dragon or some creature of myth, drifts elegant and crimson across the open sky.

The scarf dips toward the ocean and the crashing waves, and the moment is broken. She leaps off of her bike and kicks the stand, but before she can take a step down the beach two small items land in the sand before her feet.

"Watch those for me!" The blur of a teenage boy shouts as he barrels past her and down the beach. She bends down and picks up a wallet and a Motorola Razr flip phone. She stands just in time to see the boy dive into the sea. His arms cut through the water in smooth, strong strokes as he paddles toward the slice of sinking scarlet. She find her way to the water's edge, the cool surf dancing over her sandaled feet, the boy's phone and wallet in either hand.

He almost stumbles as he stands, the waves breaking around his knees, but he is smiling as he sloshes towards her.

"Hi," he holds the sopping scarf out towards her, "you dropped this."

She looks at this boy, she looks at her scarf. She thinks of all the things she can say. Flirty things. Witty things.

"You're wearing a suit," she says instead, and it is true. Water pools in the creases of his elbows and cascades out of his pockets. The sand squelches beneath his dress shoes as he joins her on the shore. He stands before her, fully clothed and dripping wet. She takes the scarf from his hand.

"I'm Raoul. Raoul de Chagny."

"Wow. That's a fancy name," she says without thinking, and then promptly starts thinking again, specifically about how stupid that had sounded. "Uh, I mean, I'm Christine Daae! Hi! Thank you! Here's your phone!"

She shoves the phone and wallet towards the dripping boy, and he laughs as he takes them.

"I'm gonna...change into some dry clothes, but would you like to meet at the pier later?" His open, smiling face turns grave with mock severity. "To follow up with the scarf. You know, make sure it's fully recovered."

"That would be nice," she responds. "For the scarf, of course."

"Well then, it's a date, Christine Daae." He says smiling. "It was very nice to meet you."

Days, thick and golden as honey, slipped by in a slow dream. The girl spends her time singing and swimming and sunning herself in the sand. Her nights are spent in the company of her father and and the Valeriuses, her days with the boy who saved her scarf.

"You have a razr." She takes a sip of her milkshake as the sun dances with the shadows cast by the umbrella above their table, and nudges the thin flip phone with her finger.

"Yup." He steals a fry from her plate.

"Hey!" she bats at his hand. "I just sort of pegged you as a cutting-edge-tech sort of guy."

"Oh, I had and iPhone! I just...broke it."

"YOU BROKE AN iPHONE? Those JUST came out. I don't even have an iPod touch!"

"I mean, it was an accident! It was in my pocket and I got dared to jump into the pool –"

"Fully clothed?" She laughs.

"Yup. My brother Phillipe turned my old phone back on until I could 'learn to be more responsible.'"

Her laugh scares a few seagulls away, and his laugh scares away the rest. They keep laughing. Laughing and smiling, their eyes brighter than the sun on the water. Bike rides and her father's violin. Searching for sea creatures that don't exist. Hands almost touching, but not quite.

The summer ends and her freckles fade, and the two of them keep in contact. He tells her about applying for college, she tells him about her favorite classes. They don't speak often, but they speak enough. The days grow cool and then warm again. School ends, and she returns with her father and Dr. and Mrs. Valerius to the beach cottage.

"Raoul!" She calls from her place on the pier. He runs to her and catches her in a hug, the momentum lifting her off her feet. He sets her down, and she is breathless. His hair is a little longer, his shoulders a little broader, but his smile is the same.

The sunlit afternoon goes pink with twilight as they stroll across the sand, and they start where they had stopped. Exploring caves and finding shells. Each day another small adventure.

"Ok, your turn," the girl says, pushing the boy towards a small house with a well kept yard. He pauses for a moment before knocking, and she nudges him again. "Really go for it this time, ok?"

"Good afternoon madam," the boy says to the old woman as she opens the door. He sounds like a character from a Dickens novel. "We are but poor youths in desperate need of a good story...mightn't you have one to spare?"

"Oh, well how nice." The old women beckons them in with a smile. "Let me put the kettle on and see what I can think up…"

The boy winks at the girl and adds a tally to a list. She is winning, but he is catching up.

The boy joins the girl and her father as they play and sing in the town square. As they play and sing on a high, windy hill overlooking the water. As they play and sing by a bonfire on the sand. The girl's eyes are closed, the firelight turning her face to gold. Her voice is sweet and pure as it carries over the waves. The boy looks at nothing but her. The girl does not see, but her father does. He smiles as he ends the song, and offers to tell them the story of the Angel of Music.

The fire burns down to embers, and the girl's father walks ahead of them. The boy's hand brushes the girl's once, then again. Then again. She is not surprised when she feels his fingers slip between hers. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. Tomorrow, she is going home.

They speak more frequently, at first. He tells her about college. She tells him about powderpuff football and her application to Juilliard. Sometimes they speak of deeper things. How he misses his parents, and wishes Phillippe could just be his brother again. How she can't remember her mother's eyes. How his sisters are sweet but overprotective. Too soon they both grow busy. The messages and calls slow. She does not tell him when Dr. Valerius passes. She does not want to bring that winter into their continued summer. The days grow cool and then warm again. School ends, and she returns with her father and Mamma Valerius to the beach cottage.

He is not there at his usual time. Weeks go by and she does not hear from him. She tells herself that this is ok. That she doesn't mind. Everything she tells herself she believes, mostly. Then she does hear from him, and all that ignored disappointment lifts. She lifts too, light as air. The summer is almost gone now, but she no longer cares.

"Christine!" He waves from their meeting spot on the pier. She runs towards him, and he scoops her into a hug, spinning her in a complete circle before gently setting her on her feet. His arms loosen, but he does not let go.

"Hi," she says softly, heat rushing to her cheeks.

"Hi," he whispers back.

They seem to realize at the same moment they are still standing remarkably close to one another, and the boy releases her. She steps back and tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear. They stroll down their favorite path, and he tells her of his summer internship, his plans for study abroad, and his sister's pregnancy. She tells him that she was accepted into Juilliard, of how hard the winter in Manhattan was, and how it was even harder to say goodbye to Dr. Valerius. They spend what few days they have together, and as summer creeps towards autumn he asks if she'd like to join him for dinner.

"A proper date. We go to a restaurant, I'll wear a tie, the whole nine yards." His face is eager, but his voice is nervous. She smiles.

"I'd like that."

He picks her up at seven, and her father answers the door. The older man makes a big show, saying the traditional, fatherly things, but both the boy and the girl can tell that he is pleased. Mamma Valerius takes a picture of the two of them. The boy does indeed wear a tie, she wears a dark blue dress of floating stuff and holds the white rose he brought her. They walk to the restaurant, because the town is small and the air is warm. When the meal is done, they split dessert. The restaurant patio leads down to the sand, so they remove their shoes and walk towards the dark water.

"Ooh! There! A goblin, waiting for the full moon so he can start the dance!" She points to a distant spot on the beach. "Do you see it?"

"As usual, no." There is an undercurrent of teasing in his tone.

"Well, maybe you aren't looking hard enough."

"You aren't wearing your glasses, and that makes it a lot easier to see things that aren't there." He nudges her arm playfully. The breeze off the water picks up, and she shivers. He starts to remove his jacket.

"Oh! I brought this just in case!" She says, pulling the gauzy, red scarf from her purse and wrapping it around her neck.

"It's made a full recovery, I see," he says, pulling the jacket over her shoulders. She steps closer, and his hands pause. Moving slowly, he raises his hands to cradle her face, his thumb running lightly across the smooth skin of her cheeks. He steps closer.

The waves themselves seem to go silent in the magnitude that is the two of them, standing so close, breathing in as the other breathes out.

"Christine," Raoul says, and her name is a wish and a thousand promises at once. They move towards one another, breathing in as the other breathes out. She can feel the warmth of him. Lips almost touching, but not quite.

His phone rings.

They pull away.

"I'm sorry," he says. "It's Philippe. He promised he wouldn't call unless it was urgent."

He walks a few steps away, and his sudden absence chills her. She can hear his murmured conversation. He sounds surprised, but pleased. He hangs up and puts the phone in his pocket.

"No Razr?" She says, hoping the joke covers the disappointment.

"Uh, oh. Yeah. I've been quite responsible lately," he takes her hand and pulls her back up the beach. "That was Phillippe, my sister Mary just went into labor."

"Oh my gosh, congratulations!" She responds. They walk quickly towards the beach cottage, and he does not release her hand.

"I'm really sorry to cut this short, but I-"

"I completely understand! You need to be there."

They make it to her door sooner then she would have liked. She hands the boy his jacket, and he fiddles with his keys.

"Listen, Christine." he starts, his words stilted, "I really like you. I like you a lot actually, and I have for a long time. I wish tonight could have gone a bit differently-"

"It's ok."

"But it's not! If I could stay here longer I would, but...Mary. Plus, I'm doing study abroad this year, and I'm leaving in a few days. It wouldn't be fair to you, what with the time difference and how hard it would be to keep in touch, so I won't ask, but -"

The phone rings again. He pauses before pulling her briskly towards him, planting a kiss on the top of her head and wrapping his arms tight around her. He lets her go and grabs her hands, kissing both of them in turn.

"You are so special to me, Christine Daae. I won't ask you to wait for me, but when I get back from this semester, we'll both be in New York . . . maybe we can try to do tonight over again, yeah?" He walks backwards a few steps towards his car, before pulling his phone from his pocket. "Philippe? Yeah, I'm on my way now."

She raises her hand to wave weakly at the receding tail lights, before turning to go inside.

They speak infrequently, but they do try. A few emails sent back and forth, each trying to fill the other in. The girl starts her lessons at Juilliard, the boy travels the world, and the newness of both situations gently sets aside the memories of old friends. The messages grow longer as the time between emails lengthens and stretches until one or the other of them drops off without realizing it. It is at this time that the girl's father begins to cough. The seasons come and go, a year passes, then another. Then another. The beach cottage remains empty.

The girl's father weakens, then becomes frail. The days grow warm and then cool again. In grey October she returns with Mamma Valerius to the beach cottage. A For Sale sign is pegged deep into the sand. They stand at the top of the high hill that overlooks the sea where the girl's father used to play, and watch the ashes dance towards the water on the cool sea breeze.

o...o0o...o

The small alarm chimed, signaling the end of lunch. Christine lifted the hand she had resting over her eyes and squinted at the phone. She sat up and swung her legs to the ground. The fountain had been calm and cool, the quiet bubbling pleasant.

But, alas, as all good things must come to an end, so too must lunch. She took her time gathering her things, tucked her book into her purse, slowly wrapped her headphones and zipped them into the a small purse pocket. She gathered her discarded food wrappers. Too soon these simple tasks were finished, and with a sigh, she picked up her bag and walked toward the gleaming opera house.

Christine pulled open the heavy, glass door and started across the lobby. She was in the middle of deciding exactly which corner of the stage would be the least conspicuous place to spend rehearsal when a voice from the box office caught her attention.

"Thank you again, my family will be so pleased." The man speaking shook Madame Giry's hand. He was was tall, well dressed, and from what Christine could see of his face, handsome. "Have a great day."

As the man turned and strode across the lobby, Christine's feet stopped beneath her. She knew that face. It was him. He was older now, but it was him.

Red scarves and the sea and sunlight burst across her mind. She could almost hear her father's violin, the notes stolen by the breeze on the high hill. Warring emotions burst across her like missiles launched from opposing trenches. Excitement and embarrassment, joy and nostalgia and why was she about to cry? She had butterflies in her stomach, but she also felt like maybe she might throw those butterflies up. This was not pleasant, but she was so happy, and all of this happened in the few moments it took Raoul de Chagny to walk across the lobby.

She remembered that last night they had spoken. His almost question. The hope of more. He had tried to call her when he returned from studying in Europe, but her father had been sick. She hadn't wanted to leave Papa's side, and she didn't know how to say no. So when the call came, she didn't answer. She put off returning the call to the point where it wouldn't make sense to call back at all, and quietly tucked that little heartbreak away along with the red scarf.

It was a heartbreak of her own making. It wouldn't do to dwell on it, and anyway, there were more pressing concerns. She's kept track of him, a bit. If an article about his family popped up online, she'd read it. Or, if she was truly bored and/or tremendously lonely, she'd open up the newspaper Mamma Valerius had delivered and scan the society pages for his name.

She stared at him, stock still, until he reached the door. As he pushed the door open, his head turned towards her in a subconscious last look.

She fled before she could tell if he saw her.

Breathing heavily, she tried to compose herself as she walked up the aisle towards the stage. It was fine. It had been a long time. It's not as if he cared anymore anyway.

The day rest of the day was a blur. She sang mechanically. She danced like an automaton. Her mind was years and miles away on a sunny shore, in a distant haze of memories and nostalgia and foolish, foolish hopes.

She cornered Meg at the end of the day to ask if her mother knew anything about the De Chagny's. Meg told her the family was among the Metropolitan Opera's strongest supporters, and said that her mom had told her over lunch that one of the brothers had come in to arrange the tickets for the season. She drifted away from the dancer after saying goodbye, and found herself seated in front of her camera, filming the week's letter almost without deciding to. Before she could finish her thoughts, the sound of a violin that signaled the Voice's approach.

Surprised, her words dropped to silence. The Voice almost never came when she was filming. She checked the time and rushed to turn the camera off. How long had she let her mind wander to start filming so late?

She closed the screen on the camera and approached the mirror as the violin solo faded to completion. All was silent, but the silence was restless. She could feel the Voice's presence, but it did not speak.

She stared at the mirror, waiting. Her brow began to furrow, and she saw her confusion reflected back at her from the mirror . She opened her mouth to speak when a mournful sigh echoed around the perimeter of the room.

"Are you ready to begin, Christine?" The Voice sounded dull. Dim. Hollow, almost, or as if some of shine had been smudged and it needed a good polish.

"Of course, Maestro." She replied, her confusion lengthening into concern. Song and instruction began to fill the room, but the Voice, still magnificent, did not dazzle. It was beautiful, but it did not dance. There had been times when she could practically hear the voice pacing behind her. Once or twice, she had even heard it as a whisper in her ear.

But today, the Voice was stationary. It issued from the mirror and did not move about. She could not help but wonder if she had hurt the Voice somehow, but she could not think of what she might have done.

o...o0o...o

Once home from the opera, and after a brief goodnight to mamma, Christine set to dismantling her closet. She opened boxes and rifled through their contents. She pawed through drawers and shoved them closed, shirts and pants still sticking out haphazardly. She pulled out storage containers from under her bed that had not seen the light of day in years and emptied them. Finally, in a small hatbox in the very back corner of the tallest shelf, she found the red scarf.

She pulled the gauzy material from the box, it's careful folds falling until the length of material pooled in her lap. She continued through the box, pulling out movie stubs and photo booth snapshots. Seashells and small bottles of sand. A single, dried white rose, brown and brittle with age.

She held the scarf to her face and imagined she could still smell the sea. Still smell the salt and the sand and the air. She kept the scarf out, but returned the rest of the keepsakes to the hatbox. She went around her room, slowly putting things back where they belonged. Her eyes were distant.

That night, she dreamed of the sea, and in the waves were many bottles full of everything she'd ever wanted. She knew if she could just grab one, she would be happy again. So she reached and she reached, scrambling at the sand, but the waves receded and the bottles always bobbed away. Indigo and cloudy green and just out reach. So close she could almost touch them, but not quite.


	9. Letter Nine - The Angel of Music

Letter Nine - The Angel of Music

This was new.

It was new, and it was not.

It was something like anger. Anger or annoyance, but he was familiar with those feelings and this...was not that.

It was also something like sorrow, sharp around the edges, soft and dark in the center, but this was not quite that either.

His eyes were stinging from lack of sleep, but at least the buzzing in his brain had lessened. He stood in the darkened passage behind the mirror and waited for the girl to arrive.

His pupil.

His project.

An ache in his teeth reminded him to unclench his jaw as previous night replayed in his mind. He had noticed, of course, that something seemed off when she returned from lunch. She seemed distant, but not in the way with which he was accustomed.

The door opened, and she stepped into the room. The cool of the glass beneath his fingertips registered before he realized his hand had moved. She unwound a diaphanous, scarlet scarf from around her throat. Good. The September air was growing cooler, and getting sick would only slow the progress she was making.

Wait.

A red scarf.

She'd mentioned a red scarf while filming yesterday. He watched as she hung the scarf carefully on her changing screen, her small hands lingering on the material for a little too long. She was still in the same strange mood.

See, he was used to the other distance. She would grow still, then somber, and he knew she was thinking about her father. Her eyes would take on a vague, empty look, and it intrigued him, in a way. He found the study of her grief quite fascinating. What would it feel like to care that much about someone else?

The girl quickly checked her appearance in the mirror before taking up her music folder and leaving the room. He turned sharply to the right, slipping down a tight passage that followed ran parallel to the corridor. Years of practice rendered his footsteps silent, and his limbs took on a liquid quality as he navigated around support beams, levers, and useful bits of rope. Her steps were soft, but he could make them out where the walls were thinnest. He kept pace with the girl, catching glimpses through well placed holes and panels where, years ago, he'd removed the plaster of the wall behind certain paintings and replaced the images with screen prints of the art on fine mesh.

But no, it wasn't so much a question about caring about someone. He knew that answer clearly as the child of any parent might. What he really wondered was what it felt like to lose someone who cared about you. Clearly the loss could be quite devastating, if she was any example.

She pushed open the doors leading backstage, and he listened briefly before sliding the false panel marking the end of the passage to the side. He slid the wall back into place, the seams disappearing completely, and he started up a maintenance ladder towards the flies.

The girl was already nestled in crowd of sopranos by the time he reached his favorite perch. She smiled in greeting at the other girls, before turning her attention to Reyer. The man was midway through his usual morning prattle, but he ignored the conductor, focusing instead on his student below. She had drifted away again, to that melancholic place she so often frequented.

But no.

That! That was the change. This distance wasn't sad. It was nervous. Buzzing. Fingertips running through soft brown hair. Feet that could not stay still as she bounced lightly on her toes. A jar full of lightning bugs and honey bees. A tiny, tiny smile on her lips and a melody started to take shape in his mind, fingers twitching, eyes drifting closed.

Three-quarter time. A waltz. No words. Just piano...perhaps an underlying melody with a violin. Bright, but contained, just enough of an edge to cut the sweetness, and -

She was happy.

His eyes snapped open, and he tucked the melody away in his mind for later. Not quite happiness, but almost. It was excitement and it was because of that boy. That boy she spent her whole "letter" rambling on about last night.

The sharp, soft, dark feeling he had been ignoring all morning rose a little higher. He could taste it, almost. A metallic green tang in the back of his throat. He followed her movements across the stage with sharp eyes as the day progressed. The company broke for lunch, but even that horrid woman's croaking once the rehearsals resumed could not break his concentration.

It wasn't that he didn't want her to be happy. Why should he care? He didn't care! He didn't care. It was simply a matter of principle. The girl was an investment, and as a wise investor, he knew to take precautions. That was it. That was all.

She had been a risk from the first, but the unmasked pain he'd seen on her face, the familiarity, the truth of it, rang so pure and loud inside of him that he had no choice but to answer. A shared kinship. Her talent, while raw, had demanded refinement. Refinement he could provide. Music had always come easily to him, and after a bit of observation he could see that music had come just as easily to her.

He had thought, as she grew more confident, that his desire to teach her would wane the happier she became. It would have made sense. He could jot it all down as a fluke, a strange bout of pity, a whim he'd followed too far. Something shifted, though, and knowing he had had a hand in creating the brightness growing stronger in her everyday...he almost felt brighter too.

But this? This nervous excitement over some boy? He felt no brighter when he saw this. This sliced at the threads he felt connected them, and he was not yet ready for those cords to be cut. The girl still had so much to learn. So much he could teach her. She could rise to great heights, he was almost certain. He could lift her to those heights, certainly, if need be. Rehearsals wrapped up below, and he hurried back towards her dressing room. A headache began to radiate from his jaw, but he didn't bother to unclench his teeth. He'd only start up again.

The girl was his pupil.

His project.

Aggravation swept through him as he arrived in the passage behind her mirror. He'd wasted his day in contemplation. Important matters had been left unattended. No matter, he would simply have to address them tomorrow. She was there now, in the room, smiling that secret, tiny, hopeful smile that had nothing to with him or the generous assistance he had been providing for the past four weeks. The churning in his stomach only grew stronger. Just a few days ago, she'd smiled at the sound of his voice. She'd smiled because of him.

That didn't matter! The girl's smiles meant nothing. Nothing aside from the fact that smiling meant she wasn't weeping, and if she wasn't weeping, she could sing.

He watched as she wandered in small circles, studying the music in her hands. She would sing a few measures, then sing them again before pausing to jot down a note or two. After an hour of this, she checked the time on her phone and left the room. He presumed she was checking to make sure the halls were empty. Whether this was due to his instructions to keep their meetings discreet, or to see if there was someone she pin the Angel's voice on, he couldn't be sure. The girl seemed to want to believe the story, but she wasn't a fool.

He pulled out his phone and checked the feeds to the security cameras, and then checked feeds to the cameras he had placed personally. At this point, nearly everyone had gone home, and the few people still lingering were either too far away or smart enough to mind their own business. He tracked her progress through the halls (first to the left to listen at each door, then back to the right, passing her own room on her way to the end of the corridor, stopping in at the bathroom before returning down the hall, as per usual). She entered the room and came to stand before the mirror. It was time.

"Good evening, Christine." He threw his voice just far enough to make it to the other side of the glass. As had happened yesterday, he couldn't seem to summon the energy to perform the part of the Angel tonight.

"Good evening, Maestro!" Her face lit like a candle. He did not care if she smiled or cried. He did not care.

"First, you shall warm up. Then, we shall we begin where we left off yesterday." His voice fell, flat and gray, like pebbles at her feet. Her expression dimmed momentarily. He instructed her to start singing, and she complied. Splendid. Her face fell further with each new comment, each flat platitude.

"Maestro?" The girl stopped singing, her concerned eyes scanning the mirror. "Have I done something wrong?"

An angel would respond with grace. An angel would be full of wisdom. Confidence. Endless calm and patience. Strength.

"Something has happened with you, Christine. You are distracted. It has to do with that man, that De Chagny fellow, at the box office," he said.

Idiot! An angel would not say something like that!

"Oh, Raoul? Yeah! I was so excited when I saw him because..." Her face brightened again as she spoke of the boy. On and on, just like yesterday, and his teeth were in the verge of cracking and everything was same roiling, raucous, metal, green.

No. That was enough.

He stormed down the passage, away from her lilting voice and the waltz refusing to stay silent at the quiet hope in her eyes. He heard her voice turn questioning just as the trapdoor closed over his head.

o...o0o...o

The subway roared past the service door. He waited for the sound to die down before slipping quickly into the dark tunnel beyond. Taking care to avoid the electrified tracks, he made his way towards the faint glow of the 66th Street–Lincoln Center subway station. He pulled himself onto the platform with ease, pulled on the hood of his sweater, and brushed the dust from his long black overcoat. He leaned against the wall, with his head angled down, keeping an eye on the stairs leading to the streets above. Vivaldi's Summer played softly through his headphones as he watched the girl walk down the stairs. Her face, open as always, was clearly troubled. The train arrived, and he pushed off the wall, keeping an eye on the girl, and entering the car behind hers. She dipped in and out of his view with the sway of the subway, blocked by a host of bodies and the doors between them. When the subway opened at her station, he overtook her on the stairs and brushed past her. Using his long stride to cover the now familiar few blocks to her home, he ducked into an ally with a good view of both the street and her front door. He waited there, in the shadows, as his investment walked slowly up the sidewalk, arms crossed, swiping occasionally at her eyes. He stayed there until he saw her close the blinds of her bedroom window.

o...o0o...o

Another day of rehearsals passed. She stood again at the mirror, as she had every night. He watched, but he did not sing. Eventually, she took her bag and left.

o...o0o...o

He avoided rehearsals the next day, choosing to attend to small fires that needed his attention across the opera. Notes to be left for certain members of the orchestra, instructions for the tech crew as to the lighting for Faust and the upcoming Gala, and other such matters. He did not go to the mirror, did not visit the passage behind her room. The security footage from the opera played across multiple monitors deep below the streets of New York City, and he watched her leave hours after everyone else had gone home.

o...o0o...o

On the third night, he approached the mirror at the appointed time. She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the glass, her head in her hands. He studied the figure before him for a long moment, taking note of the soft shaking of her shoulders.

"Why are you crying?" No singing this time, no warning violin. Her head shot up and he saw the red rimming her eyes.

"Angel? You're here!" She scrambled quickly to her feet, almost falling in her excitement. She stumbled to the mirror and placed both hands on the glass. "I thought you were gone! I thought I was crazy! That I'd imagined the whole thing."

"Did you miss your angel, then?" His question came out sharper than intended.

"Of course I did! I was –"

"I assumed since your old friend has returned, you no longer had need of me."

"I-I don't know what you mean…" she said, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

Of course she didn't understand. How would she? She was sunshine and warm breezes and walks in Central Park. She was friendly. Open. She was sand-dusted memories of happy times with people who loved her and she could never understand. Maybe she had felt pain. Maybe she'd tasted a sip of what he'd been forced to swallow his whole life. What was a sip when compared to an ocean? Soon, even the aftertaste of what plagued her would be washed from her tongue and she'd brush the fine cobwebs that spread between them away with sun-drenched fingers. She could do it whenever she wanted to, and he would not waste his time, his effort, on someone so ungrateful. So unworthy.

"Angel?" Her voice cracked on the word, and the soft, broken sound pulled him out of his thoughts. He would give her one more chance, but that was all. He would remove her from the opera entirely if need be.

"If you want to give up this music, the music your father promised you, for earthly love, then that is your choice." Yes, this is how an Angel would react. He let his voice fill the room beyond, powerful and golden once more.

"No, I–"

"It is your decision. I will go to another who needs my tutelage, if I must. Someone who will dedicate themselves to music and music alone."

"Please, let me–"

"Do not answer now. I will give you a few days to decide. Be ready with your answer when I return."

o...o0o...o

He kept an eye on her over the next few days, checking in periodically to read what her open face was saying. He had rocked her with his words. Good. She should know the stakes, the value of what he was offering. He could give her the world, if she wanted. He could list her name in the stars. She could become one of the greats, but only if she chose him.

The new-found confidence he had worked so hard to instill began to crumble. Her singing suffered. At this rate she wouldn't have the drive to sing karaoke to a roomful of drunks. She waited for him every night in her dressing room, staring hopefully at the glass.

On Tuesday, she gazed thoughtfully at the mirror for a long time before setting up her camera and sitting down to film.

o...o0o...o

If the Angel of Music was looking for some assurance of her faith in him, she would give it. Christine knew she had been dancing around this for months now, refusing to admit even too herself what was going on. She pushed the truth of it aside as something too wonderful and impossible, taking each encounter as the gift it was, expecting every moment to wake up and realize she had truly broken, truly cracked.

But now she needed to decide if she was in, all in. Had she been hearing voices, or had her father been true to his word. Did it even work like that in heaven?

She didn't know, she couldn't know, but stranger things had happened, right? Look at Joan of Arc!

All she knew for certain was that she could not lose the Angel. Not now, and if that meant putting aside the silly dreams of reuniting with some guy who probably didn't even want to speak to her, then she would do just that. She looked into the camera, and began to speak.

"At first I didn't want to say anything, because, well, it makes me sound crazy," she began. A weight seems to lift from her shoulders as she spoke. " I am taking voice lessons...from the Angel of Music."

o...o0o...o

He listened with growing satisfaction as she spoke. A great slumbering something seemed to turn over inside of him at her admission, and the experience was not altogether unpleasant. He had her. She believed. She had chosen, and she had chosen him. The waltz sprung from the dark corner of his mind where he had hidden it, fully-formed and wonderous, dancing circles through his mind as he watched her.

His pupil.

His project.

His Christine.


	10. Letter Ten - Dress Rehearsal

Letter Ten - Dress Rehearsal

The wind played tangles into Christine's hair as it blew, hot and thick, from the underground platform. She made her way down the stairs, feeling, as she always did in these sort of moments, like a character in an action scene or the tragic heroine in a drama. She ignored the bay where tourists were buying day passes and crossed the cavernous room to the turnstile, the light turning green as she tapped her metrocard. The smell of the subway grew thicker as she made her way down another flight of stairs to her platform. Old grease and hot oil and something electric. Other smells too, unwashed bodies, urine and weed. She was used to it.

Christine stood with her arms crossed, waiting for the train to arrive. The platform was mostly empty, just herself, a mom with a stroller, and a tall man in a long jacket on the far end of the platform. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. Rehearsal had been busier than usual. The cast had been called in small groups for costume fittings while the rest ran through blocking again and again. It had taken several hours, and they ended the day with a run through of the entire show. Opening night was only a week away, and tomorrow dress rehearsals would start in earnest.

A ghostly shriek echoed down the subway tunnel long before any lights illuminated the curved walls. With a rush of noise and heat the subway screeched to a halt, blowing Christine's bangs into her eyes. She brushed the hair aside and climbed onto the subway before wearily dropping into a seat.

She was still wrung dry from the previous week. The Angel's reaction about Raoul. The ultimatum. Her feelings of panic and loss at the Voice's absence were like a bruise or a livewire, dangerous and sharp and something she didn't want to touch. She sighed and settled into her seat. It didn't matter anyway. She wasn't going to think about it anymore. One day at a time. She felt dizzy at the thought of losing what the Angel gave her...the lessons, the support, the confidence, the comfort. She leaned her head against the window, the glass thrumming against her skull with the motion of the train, and watched the walls of the tunnel slip by. The whole situation was confusing and mysterious and part of her was very aware it might be impossible.

But she believed in miracles.

And this was miraculous.

And it was what she needed right now.

o...o0o...o

"Stevenson! Jacobs! Martin! Stage Right!"

"Can you toss me my… no, the other thing. Yes! Thanks!"

"Step two, three, four, and one, two, three, and plié and turn and hold!"

"Stand... still...please! Stand still! Careful of the pins now!"

Christine pushed her way through the crowded backstage, bumping shoulders with almost everyone she passed. The ballerinas finished rehearsing on stage and rushed off, pouring into the wings. Today was the first day of dress rehearsals. The morning had been spent in warm ups, last minute scene blocking, and final costume fittings. Everyone was gathered together for the first full, costumed run through.

"Christine!" Meg, practically levitating from excitement, rushed from where the dancers huddled and grabbed Christine's arms. "Guess who got a dance solo in the Gala!"

Christine shook herself out of her mental to-do list with a happy squeal and pulled Meg into a quick hug.

"Meg! That's so great! How did that happen?"

"Well, it turns out Sorelli–"

"Places, everyone!" Reyer called from the pit to the sound of instruments tuning. "Places!"

Christine joined the other soprano's and adjusted the peasant costume she was wearing, picking up the basket she would carry on stage for the next scene. The lights dimmed, and a thrill went through her.

Her first professional dress rehearsal!

She hadn't been on stage since her final performances at Julliard, and so much had happened since then.

So much had changed.

Being backstage before a show, even just dress rehearsal, felt like coming back home after a long absence. She smiled and took a few steps towards the wings to watch the opening scene.

Piangi was there, taking the part of the aged scholar, Faust, with his cup of poisoned wine. He sang in French of his sorrows, bemoaning the life that had passed him by as he focused on his studies. So wrapped up was Christine in Piangi's performance that she almost missed the cue to sing. There were two separate measures in the first act where a "heavenly chorus" (or the very earthbound chorus singing from offstage) stopped Faust from drinking the poison. One of the sopranos gently tugged Christine back to the group as the sound of thunder rumbled, Méphistophélès' cue to rise up from beneath the stage.

"Be careful of standing too close to the wings, even during rehearsal," the soprano whispered. "I got caught my first year here and Reyer, well...he wasn't happy."

Christine nodded thankfully just as the cry of "CUT!" rang throughout the room. The soprano next to her shrugged and the company as a whole drifted towards the stage to see what had happened.

"Where is Méphistophélès?" Reyer cried.

"Here…" a mournful sounding man in red called from the floor of the stage, where only his head could be seen. Laughter swept through the company as Joseph Buquet rushed to the edge of the stage.

"Sorry, man, the lift got stuck, we're doing everything we can."

"Fabulous," Reyer's voice floated from the pit, "any idea when it will be fixed?"

"Could be five minutes, could be an hour."

"Fine." There was a smart rapping of Reyer's baton, and he called out to the room. "We continue! Everyone just...avoid the hole."

The music picked back up, and the rehearsal continued somewhat smoothly, with only one bass nearly tripping into the still open trapdoor, and one alto's skirt getting caught when the lift finally snapped closed. Reyer dismissed them for the day, and Christine waved to the other chorus members as she turned down the long hallway to her dressing room.

Part of her still wished she could be closer to the other girls, or perhaps even share a room as she had when she first started. It was a silly wish, she knew. Her lessons with the angel would never work if she shared a dressing room. There was a tiny part of her, though, a tiny, ungrateful part she told herself to ignore, that missed being around people. She loved the feeling that came just before a show. The camaraderie, the excitement, and she couldn't take part in any of it, tucked in this out of the way corner as she was.

She opened the door of her dressing room and pushed the thoughts away. She was being childish, describing high school theater when she was now a professional. She was in the chorus at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She had basically achieved her dreams! People worked their whole lives to achieve what she had achieved.

She dropped her music folder onto her vanity and sank in the seat. Things were better now, right?

They had to be.

Better at least than they were a month ago. Two months ago. She had a job. A dream job. Her dream job, in a beautiful city with a nice place to call home. There had been a long time when she was a little girl where she didn't even have _that._ Things were much better now. She had Mamma Valerius, she had Meg, Lyla, the other girls in the chorus. People were nice. She was finding her place.

Things were better now.

Sure, she couldn't really see Raoul anymore, which was hard after so long and him being right there, but it was also fine, she was fine, it didn't matter and there were more important things, like the Gala and opening night, and the beautiful, beautiful gift that was her lessons with the Angel. Those were real. They were here and happening, just like papa had promised and she was ok.

Maybe not happy, but she was ok.

She was working her way towards happy. She was getting there. Who cared if she felt a little lonely in this out-of-the-way room? Who cared if she left the opera alone each night? Who cared if the Angel of Music - no.

No.

Christine stood up from the table abruptly, lipstick, foundation, and combs rattling with the motion. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled deeply. She had decided.

The Angel was real.

This was happening.

She grabbed her keys and locked the door behind her. She wasn't going crazy and this wasn't some kind of trick. Christine had checked the hallway every single night before her lessons, and there was never anyone anywhere near her room. She looked at her phone. There was plenty of time. She reached the door nearest to her and placed her ear against the wood. Nothing. No sound. She leaned away from the door, but it wasn't enough to just listen. Tonight she needed more. The knob turned easily under her hand, and the door opened to a small, dark storage closet. Rolls of toilet paper in neat rows. Cleaning supplies on the shelves. Barely enough room for the vacuum, let alone a man.

Because the voice sounded like a man's.

No!

The voice sounded angelic. The voice sounded angelic because it was an Angel's voice. She shut the door with more force than she intended. An angelic tenor or bass, maybe, but not a man. She continued down the hallway, opening the doors she'd only ever listened at before. More storage closets. A room full of music stands. An empty office with a small fish tank bubbling in the corner. Nothing. No one.

She wasn't going crazy and it wasn't some kind of trick.

Christine finished the hallway but still felt restless. She roamed the halls until she came upon the other dressing rooms. They were quiet. Everyone else had gone home. She wandered past dark rehearsal rooms and empty offices. On the opposite side of the opera, she paused to watch a dancer whose name she didn't know pirouette across a mirrored room. She made her way through the lobby, nodding to the night guard as she passed, and stopped at the massive windows that made up the front wall of the opera. The lights of the city told a million different stories all at once, but she knew none of them.

Christine checked the time and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She should head back. Her footsteps echoed softly as crossed the lobby, everything cream and cool and modern until she entered the crimson auditorium. A cleaning woman was backing out of the far door with her cart, and Christine gave her a small wave.

"Would you like the lights left on?" The woman paused, her cart holding open the door.

"No, that's fine. I'm just walking through."

Her feet were quiet on the lush red carpet, and the red velvet of the seats was soft beneath her fingertips. She turned her face upward, taking in the starburst chandelier sparkling above her before the lights dimmed. A few emergency lights glowed orange near the exits, and she made her way towards the single, bare light bulb illuminating the stage. The ghost light. She pulled herself onto the tall lip of the stage with some effort and turned to take in the room. Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she could see the seats filled. She could feel the warmth of the spotlight. Almost without realizing, Christine started to sing. One cautious note. Then another. Soon the Jewel Song from Faust began to pour out of her.

A shadow rose from one of the seats and moved towards the door. Christine's voice died in her throat.

"Hello?" Christine called. The shadow stopped. Turned. Walked towards her. This was it. This was him. She'd been duped and she was a fool and this was -

"I apologize for the interruption, miss." The shadow turned into a man in a three piece suit. Christine's heart dropped into a more normal rhythm. "I was just on the way out of the theater when you started singing, and I didn't mean to startle you."

His voice in no way resembled the the one that came from her mirror. The ghost light illuminated a friendly, open face with startling green eyes.

"It's fine, I just didn't expect anyone else to be here." She smiled politely. He smiled back, but made no move to leave. She scrambled for something else to say. "Do you work here? At the opera?"

"In a manner of speaking." The man answered.

"Oh. Ok…"

The two stood in silence for a long moment before the man nodded, as though coming to some decision.

"Enjoy the rest of your evening, miss, and thank you for the song. You have a lovely voice."

The man turned and strode out of the auditorium without waiting for Christine to respond, disappearing through the door to the lobby. Christine leapt off the stage and barreled up the sloping walkway. What if it was him?

Maybe the Angel _was_ all a ruse.

There were only a few minutes until her lesson. This could have been his way of putting her off the scent! Maybe he had just disguised his voice. She hit the swinging door at a run and was halfway across the lobby before she thought to be stealthy. She slowed to a walk and looked about her. He was nowhere to be seen. She felt a queasy sort of triumph. She knew it. He was probably making his way back to her dressing room right now. She cast one last, frantic glance across the lobby, and spotted him. There, on the other side of the glass. He strode past the fountain, hailed a cab, and drove away.

Ok.

Ok.

Ok.

She felt the buzz of her phone's alarm and took off toward her dressing room. This was good news! This was great news! That guy couldn't be the Angel! He had driven off! There was no way he could get back into the opera before she got back to her dressing room. She wasn't going crazy! This wasn't some kind of trick! Her hands shook as she unlocked the dressing room door, and she felt like she could float away. Just to be sure, just to cancel out the last doubt, she ran her hand along the edge of the mirror. Nothing. She ran her hand down the other side. Nothing. No levers, not buttons, no hidden catches. Nothing but a solid wall. She dragged a chair a few feet towards the mirror so she could reach the top but the strains of a violin caught her ear. She left the chair and took a few steadying breaths, moved to her place in front of the mirror, and smiled.

The mirror was just a mirror. She wasn't going crazy and it wasn't some kind of trick.

o...o0o...o

Christine cornered Meg the next day and asked her about the man she had seen the night before.

"Oh, him? That's just Pierson." Meg looped her arm through Christine's and the two of them walked toward the little cafe near the opera. "Not really sure what his deal is. He might be head of security? Or maybe a P.I.?"

"And he's just allowed to...roam the opera?" Christine said.

"Well, yeah, I guess, if he's head of security. He's been here for a few years. Seems nice enough but pretty much keeps to himself."

Christine decided to drop it. The explanation made sense, and she didn't want to dig anymore. She stepped up to the counter and ordered a sandwich. Meg ordered a salad. The two grabbed their food from the hand-off counter and sat at one of the tables outside. It was a beautiful day, the air warm and pleasant, the entire city seeming to sigh with relief as the heat of summer lifted.

"Tell me more about your dance solo," Christine said around a mouthful of food.

"Yes! Ok, so," Meg leaned back in her seat with a satisfied air. "You know La Sorelli? Tall, French, Prima Ballerina?"

"Yeah."

"Well, she was originally going to lead all four of the dance numbers in the Gala. BUT there's this one number that's shorter than the rest, and she got into an argument with the choreographer the other day – Christine?"

"Yes." Christine had lifted her face towards the sun. She cracked open one eye and nodded at Meg. "Continue, I'm listening."

"And she was like 'Can I cut it down to three dances?' and the choreographer was like 'No.' and Sorelli was like 'Cut it down to three.' and he was like 'No.'"

"She's the prima does she want cut her own numbers?"

"I know! I'm getting there. SO. Sorelli is all 'Listen, I am making a Very Important Speech to the managers right after the Gala. I need time to practice beforehand. Let me sit that dance out.' and he's like 'I don't care WHO you're dating at the moment, the schedule is set–"

"Ooooh," Christine sat up quickly. "Who's she dating?"

"I guess it's one of the new patrons? One of the de Chagny's? Anyway…" Meg's voice drifted further and further away as Christine tried to absorb this blow. Was it possible? Could Raoul really be dating–nope. Nope. That didn't matter. Raoul was just a friend who could date whoever he wanted. He was barely even a friend at this point. Christine turned her attention back to Meg.

"...and by THAT point, Reyer was involved, the choreographer was at his wit's end, and Sorelli told them to give the shortest number to one of the other girl's. I auditioned, and here we are!"

"Meg, I'm so happy for you!" Christine leaned over and gave Meg a quick hug. Meg went into more detail about her solo, which led to talk about the Gala, which led to opening night, and the two chatted throughout the remainder of the lunch hour.

The opening of Faust went off without a hitch that afternoon, the lift delivering Méphistophélès (now with fog!) at the appointed time. There was a tiny, silent round of applause from the chorus and the stagehands at this. Carlotta pushed her way through the clapping crowd, bumping into Christine.

The diva shot Christine a withering look before climbing the ladder to a platform with a spinning wheel. Carlotta's Marguerite costume was a more elaborate version of the peasant dresses the chorus wore, at least for the opening. There was talk of doing an adaptation with more modern costumes later in the season, but for opening night, the costumes were replicas of the original 1880's production, all puffed sleeves and long skirts perfect for twirling. A spotlight illuminated Carlotta from backstage as she blissfully spun thread on her spinning wheel. Méphistophélès was showing Faust a vision of what the old scholar could have if he sold his soul for youth. The spotlight gave Carlotta a dreamy, angelic glow, but the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that she only wore a wig cap instead of the two long braids that would complete the costume. One of Carlotta's assistants waited at the base of the ladder with the wig in hand, and fitted it to Carlotta's head as soon she descended.

Faust sold his soul, the poisoned wine becoming an elixir of youth. Christine came and went from the stage, always trying to discreetly watch from the wings as the now youthful Faust seduced the innocent Marguerite away from the besotted Siébel. Carlotta's rendition of the Jewel Song was more brazen than demure, and her "sorrow" at being a single, pregnant, outcast came across as indigence, but her voice was still lovely and there was a part of Christine that couldn't help but admire her.

Carlotta had, for the most part, left Christine alone this week. With the Gala and opening night, all Carlotta seemed capable of was the occasional dirty look in Christine's direction, which was a welcome change. Christine was just happy that Carlotta didn't have time to harass her. Rehearsal drew to a close. In the final scene, as Marguerite was called up to heaven, the harness got stuck about 15 feet off the ground, leaving Carlotta stranded. Carlotta heaped abuse on Reyer, the stagehands, even the Opera Ghost. As the company filtered off the stage to give the stagehands room to rescue the dangling prima donna, Christine passed Joseph Buquet.

"I'm telling you, I found where the ghost lives!" Bouquet said to another stagehand.

"Yeah, right."

"Seriously! It's over by one of the set pieces, and I think…" His voice faded out of Christine's hearing, and she hastened to her dressing room. She sang the Jewel Song in her dressing room to keep her voice warm, infusing the emotions she felt the scene called for into the song. Humble and demure at the start when Marguerite discovers a box of jewels left by Faust, then tipping over into a dangerous, almost prideful joy at how the Jewel's make her look and feel. The perfect set up for her to be seduced at the end of the act. Christine finished the song a second, third, and fourth time before she wandered to the dressing room door. She stood for a long moment with her hand on the knob, silently counting the seconds that ticked by, before sitting back down at her vanity.

"Aren't you going to search the halls for imposters?" The golden voice whispered in her ear. She jumped a little in her seat.

"I wasn't…"

"Perhaps I am just early." There was a click, and the door swung open slowly. "Don't let me keep you, Miss Daaé. Search away."

"No!" Christine jumped out of her chair and pulled the door closed. "No, that's all right, I don't need to search tonight."

Her breaths were shallow and fast as she leaned against the door, trying to keep her composure. Of course the Angel knew her little routine. Knew about her doubts. Knew about yesterday. Her eyes pricked with unshed tears. She was stupid. An idiot. Ungrateful. And now he would leave her.

"No need to fret." The voice was soft and warm in her ear. "No need for tears."

Christine's breathing slowed at the Angel's tone. The voice began to drift towards the mirror, and she followed, as though being led by an unseen hand.

"This is a wonderful development, my dear." The Angel had never called her that before, and her heart twisted with hope. "I do not fault you for your doubts, they were natural. Warranted."

She paused in her normal spot in front of the mirror. Glancing in her own eyes, she could still see a trace of frantic worry, but the voice went on, soothing and sunset and kind.

"No, I do not fault you. Rather, I value your faith. I have seen your struggle, but through it you have proven your dedication. To me. To the music."

She nodded, unable to speak.

"Rest easy now, child. I do not wish you to fear me. I wish to be your are safe with me. I am your guide. Your confidante. Will you trust me?"

"Yes…" she breathed.

"Good, Miss Daaé. That is good." The voice paused for a moment, and Christine exhaled. "How are you, my dear?"

"I..I'm fine," Christine said, confused. The Angel was normally all business. Straight to singing. No conversation other than instruction.

"Merely fine? How are you feeling about rehearsals? Life? You cannot grow as a singer if you do not feel stable and secure."

"Oh, well...yes. Things are fine. Good. Mamma and I are getting along well, I, uh, I enjoy my time here, and the people are nice...for the most part."

The Angel sighed, the sound drifting slowly about the room, but it was not an angry sound, merely resigned.

"That is good, Miss Daaé, though I hope in future you will feel more comfortable confiding in me."

"I'm comfortable–"

"No, no, my dear. You aren't. Not yet. I can tell. I put you through quite the ordeal last week. An unfortunate necessity, of course, but difficult all the same. I needed to know for certain that you were worth my time. I now know that you are. Come, let us sing."

Christine nodded slowly, corrected her posture, and the lesson commenced. The Angel was as exacting as ever in his instruction, stopping to have her repeat a note or phrase until he was satisfied, but there was something different about this lesson. There was a warmth in the Angel's voice, a gentleness that had not been there previously, and it filled Christine with a blossoming glow. She had done right. She could doubt no longer. This was where she was meant to be. A gift from her father, a gift from God. Why she, of all people, had been chosen for this blessing, she couldn't understand, but it was real and it was happening and it was hers. She poured her joy into her voice, singing as she hadn't since her father was alive. She was happily exhausted by the time the Angel finally called for the lesson to end.

"You did well tonight, Miss Daaé. Very well, indeed."

"Thank you, Maestro," Christine said. The Angel's words flitted through her head, and after a moment she continued. "That was...this is the best I've felt in a long while."

"Good." If a voice could smile, it would sound like the Angel did at that moment. "That is good."

Christine smiled back.

"Farewell and good evening, my dear." The voice drifted deeper into the mirror as it always did at the end of a lesson.

"Good night, Maestro." Christine slipped on her jacket, grabbed her bag, and headed for the door.

"Oh, and Miss Daaé?" the voice was a whisper in her ear, and she paused with her hand on the knob.

"Yes, Maestro?" She replied, just as soft.

"We must ready you for your debut."

o...o0o...o

The next few days passed in a blur. The mornings were reserved for Gala rehearsal and the chorus reviewed the numbers they would be performing. There were pieces from Tosca, Aida, and Norma. A number of operatic stars who had gotten their start at the Metropolitan Opera came and went, people Christine had admired for years, people who now traveled all around the world to sing. In the afternoons, the company would run through Faust in its entirety. The managers, both new and old, came one afternoon to watch. Each day the production went smoother, the lighting and effects increasing with each practice, each performance had less snarls, less accidents.

Her evenings were spent with the Angel of Music. A thrill of excitement ran through Christine every time she thought of the Angel's words. He had not mentioned her debut again, but she strove to pay extra attention and dedication in her lessons. Perhaps the Angel knew of an upcoming audition, and with each passing day she grew more and more certain of her desire to succeed at the opera. If there was an audition, she would be ready for it. During lessons, the Angel moved on from general technique to a more acute focus on one song: Carlotta's number from the Gala, a piece from Romeo and Juliet that Christine adored.

"No reason, my dear, other than that it is perfectly suited to your voice." The voice had said when Christine asked why that song had been chosen.

Christine woke on Tuesday feeling...different. It wasn't until she was on the subway that she realized what the difference was. For the first time in weeks, she was happy to be awake.

The opera was bustling by the time Christine arrived. There were only two days remaining until opening night, and one week until the Gala. The buzz of energy was palpable. She quickly dropped her bag in her dressing room, hurried into her costume for Faust, and joined the rest of the company on stage. Reyer announced to the company what the Angel had told her the night before: Gala rehearsals would resume on Friday. Instead, there would be a full run through of the show before and after lunch until opening night. The experienced members of the company, and Christine, were already in costume, but the newest members were given fifteen minutes to go back to their dressing rooms and change.

"Miss Daaé," Reyer paused as he passed Christine on his way to the pit and nodded approvingly. "Always a pleasure to see one of our new recruits staying on top of things. Well done."

Christine went into rehearsals with more spirit than she ever had before. She poured more and more of herself into her performance, and with a sudden clarity she realized she was enjoying herself. She was having fun! The run through of the show continued flawlessly, and Christine drank in every second of it.

"Hey, Chris!" Meg caught up with Christine as the cast broke for lunch. "Wanna grab something to eat at the cafe?"

Meg had already removed her costume and wore a pair of boots over her black stockings. She pulled a large grey sweater over her leotard. Christine agreed happily, and the two made their way to Christine's dressing room. Meg inspected the assortment of stray props displayed on the antique dresser as Christine changed behind the screen. Christine laughed when she heard the _ting!_ of the silver egg cups.

"Those are my favorite!" She called from behind the screen, and Meg responded by tapping the cups together once more. Christine grabbed her purse, and the two hurried up the hallway towards the exit. They were chatting about the morning's rehearsal and Meg's previous opening night experiences when they saw a large knot of girl's gathered by one of the stage doors.

"I wonder what's going on there?" Christine said.

"I have an idea," said Meg, rolling her eyes. The group of girls laughed loudly and then dissipated, leaving a lone figure. "Joseph Buquet."

"Come on ladies, don't you want to see the Ghost?" he shouted at the retreating girls. He shook his head, hands on hips, but his face lit up when he saw Meg and Christine. The girl's tried to power past him, but he jogged a few steps and cut them off. He put his arm out to stop them and leaned lazily against the wall.

"Come on, Joe," Meg said, "let us go."

"What would you lovely ladies say if I told you that I know where the ghost lives?" Joseph said, ignoring Meg.

"I'd say fat chance, now let us by."

"Listen, listen..." Joseph put up both his hands to block them. "There's a trapdoor under the stage, near a flat and a set from Le Roi de Lahore, and I swear to you that I saw the Opera Ghost climbing out of it."

"That's nice, but I'm hungry, and you're blocking me."

Joseph rolled his eyes and turned his attention to Christine.

"You're not saying much," He ran his fingers lightly down her forearm before catching her hand in his. "What do you say? You, me, a little hunting for ghosts? See where things go?"

"Nope." Christine pulled her hand from his. "I...no. No thank you."

"Fine, suit yourselves," Joseph stalked off, muttering insults under his breath.

Meg and Christine looked at each other for a long moment before bursting out laughing, and the two headed to lunch.

o...o0o...o

The rest of the day went smoothly. The second run through of Faust only had one minor snag (an alto accidentally stepped on Carlotta's dress during the market scene and everyone was treated to a fifteen minute monologue from Carlotta on why that girl, in particular, would be the downfall of the entire Metropolitan Opera). Christine filmed a short, happy update for her weekly letter before a productive lesson with the Angel. She left the Opera feeling energized and excited.

She skipped lightly down the subway steps, the warm air from below playfully tangling her hair. The platform was full, but not crowded, and after a short while the echoing whistle announced the arrival of the train. The seats were quickly taken, so she held onto one of the handles near the back of the train and enjoyed an audiobook of Swedish fairytales through a headphone in one ear. The walls whizzed passed with only the occasional streak of light to break the monotony, and in her mind she painted the tunnels with Swedish monsters and mermaids and maidens.

Her stop arrived, and she made her way across the platform. A couple of men in suits, deep in conversation, jostled past on either side of her, and a briefcase knocked into her hand. Her phone skittered across the platform floor and came to rest at the base of the stairs. With a cry, she hurried after the phone and knelt to pick it up. The screen hadn't cracked. She breathed a sigh of relief and stood, just as something tall and solid collided into her from behind.

"Oh! I'm so sorry," she said to the black-jacketed man as he hurried up the stairs. He didn't acknowledge her. She put the headphone back in her ear and hit play on the audiobook. The night air was cool and fresh on the street above, and though she could not see the stars for the city lights, she knew they were there. The thought made her happy, and she wondered if the Angel was watching over her now.

The Angel of Music.

The whole situation was confusing and mysterious, but who cared if it was supposed to be impossible?

She believed in miracles.

This was miraculous.

And it was what she needed right now.

* * *

IS THAT A _**THE PERSIAN**_ CAMEO I SPY? I THINK YOU KNOW. I THINK YOU KNOW IT IS.


	11. Letter Eleven - The Farewell Gala

Letter Eleven - The Farewell Gala

 _I'm singing._

 _I'm singing._

 _I'm singing._

The thought ripped across Christine's mind over and over again, almost drowning out the music she was making. She was on stage. She was alone. She was in a dress that sparkled like rubies and her voice was ringing out into the theater. The packed theater. Echoing off the walls and ceiling and wallets. Not wallets, that was wrong, those didn't echo, but the past did. She was singing. She could hear her own voice in her ear and the boy who saved her scarf was somewhere nearby and there were bad things, bad things, bad things, and the song was ending now and maybe so was she.

Dark.

Grey.

Everything was made of dark and grey. Tulle and fog and muted colors and a sea made of bottles. There were people above her and the lights were bright. Then they were gone. She was alone on a high windy hill. She was alone on a cold October beach. She was alone in the subway tunnels.

It was possible she was in her dressing room.

Tulle and fog, crepe and mist, inconsequential and vaporous and covering. She was in a motel room, in many hotel rooms, in an alley, in a barn, and always from somewhere just behind her she could hear her father's violin, and she was young and spinning and happy, but also so, so, so sad for reasons she couldn't remember at the moment but felt heavy and important in her hands.

She could hear Meg, nice Meg, fun Meg, friend Meg. Meg and another woman talking about Trauma.

Trauma with a capital T.

Traaaaaaaaa-mah.

She did not want to leave the grey. It was cool and soothing and safe. Far away from the bad things and Joseph Buquet and there was a man speaking now, floating with the other voices...

o...o0o...o

The final two days before opening night passed in a blur of song and sweat and sound. Among the new chorus members there was a buzz, a thrill of excitement. This is what they had been working towards, dreaming of, wishing for all those opening nights in high school and community theater. This was dreams coming true.

Christine loved every second. The feel of being backstage was electric. The final dress rehearsal broke, and the cast was released for a few hours to rest and eat before the curtain rose on the 2014-2015 opera season. Christine heard some of the other chorus members making plans to get dinner together, but she ducked off stage and hurried to her dressing room.

"Angel, are you here?" She closed the door behind her and listened.

"As I said I would be," the Angel's voice, sonorous and tinged with amusement, filled the room.

"Ok. Ok, good," Christine said. She opened the lunch bag on her desk. "I brought something light, like you suggested. PB&J and an apple."

"Very good. That will sustain you without hindering your voice. Would you like me to go over what you should expect tonight?"

Christine nodded, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the mirror, and started eating. The Angel covered many topics as she finished her sandwich and started on her apple, ranging from the size of the audience to tips on how to avoid stage fright. The voice flowed over and around her, soothing her like a lullaby. She washed the food down with sips of tepid water, and once finished the Angel talked her through a series of stretches.

"Roll your head clockwise...good, now counterclockwise...and done. How are you feeling, Miss Daaé?"

Her eyes opened slowly. Her limbs were warm and loose, and the Voice wrapped about her like a velvet blanket. She felt content. She felt safe. She felt she could go to sleep right there and then, and if she did, nothing bad would ever happen again.

"I feel good." Is what she said aloud.

Christine sat at her vanity and braided her hair in two french braids. Her bangs were tricky, the short hairs slipping from her fingers, but eventually she pinned the tail ends of the braids close to her head and put on a wig cap. The Angel continued to speak, encouraging her and answering her questions without annoyance. He gave suggestions as she applied her stage make-up. He regaled her with funny stories of other musicians he had visited in the past while she changed into her costume. As long as he was speaking, she felt ok.

"Time to warm up," the Angel said once she had adjusted her wig. "Begin with the arpeggio I taught you the other day."

Christine sang as the Angel ran her through exercises for her upper register, her lower register, and volume. An alarm went off on her phone. Twenty minutes until she needed to report to the stage. She felt a nervous spike shoot through her at the sound. She grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and headed to the bathroom.

Stepping out into the hallway felt like stepping out of a dream, like waking, and in a rush the impending doom of the evening crashed upon her. Could she do this? Was she ready? She rinsed her mouth and looked into the mirror. What was she doing here? She turned the water off and hurried back to her dressing room.

"Maestro…" she said as she crossed to the mirror.

"You are ready, Miss Daaé." The Angel's tone brooked no argument. "Now go. It is time."

Christine released a shaky breath and squeezed her hands into fists as though clinging to the Angel's words. She nodded and turned to the door.

"Christine."

She turned to look at the mirror.

"I will be there. Listening. You won't be alone."

She smiled and shut the door behind her.

Christine hurried to the stage. The audience sounded like the sea, their voices crashing like waves against the curtain. Christine saw Meg stretching with the dancers and waved at her. Meg mouthed ' _break a leg!'_ in return. Christine grabbed her basket from the prop table and took her place with the rest of the chorus. Reyer stopped by briefly to give some sort of speech about opening night, but Christine heard very little of what was said. She took the hand of a soprano near her and gave it a squeeze. The girl squeezed back and shot Christine a bright smile as the sound of the orchestra tuning their instruments silenced the sea of people. Christine gazed up into the rafters.

 _Oh Lord, don't let me fail._

God had sent the Angel of Music to her. God would take care of her. Everything was going to be alright. Her father was up there, looking down on her, and she knew he would be proud.

The opening notes of Faust erupted from the pit.

Christine jumped a bit at the sound, and the soprano let go of Christine's to pat her shoulder.

"Don't worry," the girl whispered in Christine's ear. "You'll do fine!"

Christine's heart beat wildly in her chest until she heard the cue for the chorus. She began to sing, and it was as if Christine disappeared. She entered the world of the story, and the only thing that mattered was the music. The lights were bright and hot. The audience was shapeless and shifting. But she was part of a heavenly chorus. She was a peasant girl on market day. She was one of many in mob out for blood. She drank in the music, and the music poured out of her.

She was free.

All too soon, Christine saw the curtain fall. Carlotta began hissing for the stagehands to lower her from her harness for the curtain call. Bit by bit, Christine came back to herself, like box being closed.

Breathing heavily, she joined hands with the line of chorus members, and together they ran into the light. They bowed, raised their hands into the air, bowed again, then split into two groups to allow space for the lead actors.

The principal actors had their bows, and Christine allowed her eyes to roam across the audience as she clapped. At least half of the audience was standing. Her face began to hurt from how wide she was smiling. Her eyes danced across the auditorium, from the front row to the nosebleeds and back again. The private boxes were all occupied save one, but as she gestured with the rest of the company to Reyer and the orchestra, her eyes caught on one box in particular.

Raoul was standing, clapping, cheering so exuberantly she felt she could almost make out his voice in the crowd.

And he was looking at her.

She held his gaze for a long moment, a sweet warmth filling her chest before she caught herself and looked away. She gestured towards the sound booth, her heart skittering around her chest in a way that felt almost certainly like joy...if joy was wearing panic as a sweater. A final bow, and the curtain came down.

The company began to disperse, words of congratulations and talk of the show bouncing around the stage. Christine stayed where she was, gazing at the curtain and running through it all again.

"Christine!" Meg appeared suddenly and folded Christine into a hug. "What did you think! How'd your first show go?"

"It was...incredible."

"Right? Come on," Meg took Christine's hand and pulled her across the stage. "I want to hear all about it."

Christine followed Meg to her dressing room, and the two of them rehashed the show. Lyla chimed in now and then as she and Meg got changed.

"Chris, are you coming out with us?" Lyla asked as she cleaned off her stage make-up.

"I don't know. I haven't heard about any plans."

"Oh yeah! I was meaning to tell you," Meg said. "Most of the company goes out together after opening night. You've gotta come, it's always so much fun!"

"Yeah, you have to come, Christine!" Lyla said

"Ok. . .yeah! That sounds great. I can just run to my dressing room real fast, and–"

"Just wait, I'm basically ready! I'll run to your room with you and we can just head out from there," Meg said. "Lyla, do you want us to wait for you?"

"No thanks, I'm riding over with someone already."

"Oooh, that tenor? New-Guy-Nate?" Meg asked as she swiped on some lip gloss.

"Yes, New-Guy-Nate."

"Well, you two kids have fun." Meg grabbed her coat and purse. Christine waved goodbye to Lyla, and the two girls set off down the hall. They were so wrapped up in their conversation that it wasn't until Christine ushered Meg into the dressing room that she remembered the Angel of Music.

There was a feeling in the air, the same she felt whenever they had their lessons. She knew he was there, but she didn't know if she should acknowledge him in Meg's presence. She hadn't told anyone but Mamma about the Angel, and she didn't think she should. She had a feeling the Angel wouldn't want it.

Christine glanced anxiously at the mirror as she headed towards the changing screen. Meg kept up a happy stream of chatter, and Christine responded when necessary. She hated to think that the Angel might feel shunned by her behavior after everything he had done for her. She dressed quickly, hung up her costume, and put the wig on its stand. Her hair came out of the braids in waves, and Meg laughed when she saw Christine's bangs poking straight from her forehead at all angles. As Christine pinned them back, she had an idea. She swept some powder across her face, grabbed her purse, and the two girls headed out of the dressing room. They were a few feet down the hall when Christine patted her pockets as if she couldn't find something.

"Hold on just a sec, I left my phone in there."

Christine ran back into the room and straight to the mirror. She couldn't tell if she could feel the Angel any longer, but she had to try.

"Maestro," she stage-whispered, "It went so well! I can't wait to discuss it with you. I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

She swiped her phone off the desk and ran back out to Meg.

The club was loud and shiny, all sleek edges and chrome and pulsing lights. They found Lyla and some of the other girls from the chorus and ballet in a tight knot on the dance floor. The club played a fun mix of top-40 hits and 80's power ballads, and though Christine's 'dancing' could be better described as 'joyful jumping,' she enjoyed herself immensely. The music turned to a slower song, and the girls took the opportunity to sit down.

"I love this song," Meg said over the music, "but it's a better ballad than a dance number, you know?"

"For sure, unless it's like, an interpretive number?" Lyla said.

"Totally!"

"I'd love it even more if I could breathe!" Christine fanned herself. "I'm not as in shape as you ballet girls."

Lyla went up to the bar and came back with three waters. A tall, dark-skinned man with a jaw like chiseled stone threw his arm around Lyla's shoulders and the two started speaking in low tones. Christine sipped her water and gazed around the club. She recognized several people from the opera, but almost choked on her water when she saw La Sorelli twined around a man in a suit. The two were, for lack of a gentler description, sucking face like teenagers. One thing was absolutely certain:

That man was not Raoul de Chagny.

"Meg," Christine hissed into the girl's ear, and pointed towards Sorrelli. "Who. Is. That?"

"Uh, Sorelli and her boyfriend?" Meg shot her a weird look. "I told you about him the other day. Why?"

"Um. No reason." Christine said quickly. Too quickly. "I just thought she was seeing Raoul."

"Who's Raoul?"

Christine felt her whole body go rigid. Oh no.

"Wait," Meg's eyes grew wide. "Do you, like...know the de Chagny's?"

Oh. No.

"CHRISTINE!" Meg gasped and slapped Christine on the arm. "You've been holding out on me! Tell me EVERYTHING."

o...o0o...o

Christine nodded to the security guard and the occasional custodian as she made her way through the opera early the next morning. She knew she was hours earlier than the rest of the company, but she had realized just before bed the previous night that the new rehearsal and show schedule would eat into the time she usually spent at lessons with the Angel of Music. It was worth a shot to show up early, even if she might not hear the Voice until after the show that night. She couldn't wait. She needed to be back at the opera.

There was a loud clatter as she unlocked her door, and she paused for a moment to listen. Strange. Someone must have been cleaning in the other rooms, but for a moment the sound had seemed to come from behind her door. She pushed into the room.

"My, my. Such a dutiful student to arrive so early after staying out so late." The Voice was flat.

"Maestro! You're here, I'm so glad!"

"Are you? I am surprised. It seemed you had no time for your Angel last night."

"Oh!" Christine felt a stab of worry. "I'm sorry, Maestro. Everything happened so fast last night. Meg and I were talking about the show and she said it was tradition for the cast to go out, and then I didn't want to talk to you in front of her because I wasn't sure if you wanted anyone to know and I'm sorry. Please forgive me, Maestro...I should have come straight here."

The Voice was silent.

"I didn't mean to cause any offense. I couldn't have done any of this without you, and that's why I'm here. I couldn't wait to hear what you had to say about the show."

The Voice was silent.

"Please, Maestro…"

"You did well not to reveal my presence," the Voice finally said after a long moment. "It would not do for unworthy persons to know of our lessons."

"Of course!" Christine said eagerly, but her face grew worried a moment later. "I hope...is it alright that I told Mamma Valerius?"

The Angel chuckled, and the room seemed to grow warmer.

"Yes, my dear girl. You may tell your guardian anything you please. There is one thing you must promise me Christine."

"Anything, Maestro."

"You must promise to come to me after every performance."

"Of course, I just–"

"No. No, Miss Daaé. No 'I just,' no excuses. I want you to return to the dressing room immediately after curtain call. You are my student. I am training you to be a great artist, possibly the best the world has ever seen."

"That's very kind, but–"

"I do not trouble myself with petty kindness and trite compliments," the Angel interrupted, almost harshly. "I am speaking the truth. I have said I will not waste my time on someone unworthy. I have decided that you are worthy, Miss Daaé, but I must know that you will come to me immediately after the show."

"O-of course."

"Promise me, Miss Daaé."

"I promise."

"Good. Now, if you ever receive invitations like the one last night, please request my permission first. I know what is best for your voice, and I will know if it is an appropriate time to stay out all hours of the night."

"I didn't stay out very late! We just–"

"You will run the invitations by me, Miss Daaé."

"Yes, Maestro."

"Excellent. Now, would you like to hear my thoughts on the show?" The Angel asked, and Christine nodded. As the Voice spoke, a part of her continued to mull over the Angel's requests. Something about it struck her as odd, but she couldn't quite discern what. After a moment, she dismissed the thoughts. They were reasonable requests, and she knew the Angel of Music had only her best interest at heart. She owed it to him to give music her all.

"Since you are already here, and the schedule has changed, what do you say we move lessons to this time each day?" The Angel asked, to which Christine readily agreed.

The lesson went longer than usual and Christine, high on the feeling from the night before, gave herself over to the music. The Angel pushed her, and she soared. Her voice spilled out of her, decadent and lovely, better than she had ever sung before. She felt drained and shaky by the end of the lesson.

"You must rest before rehearsal," the Angel said once she had finished a vocal cool down. "There is plenty of time. Set an alarm for an hour on your phone and lay down on the settee."

"Oh, I don't need to–"

"Miss Daaé?" The Angel's tone held a warning. Christine set the alarm and lay on the small couch, draping an old curtain or table cloth of some sort over herself as a blanket.

"It takes me a while to fall asleep," she said softly, "I don't really know if it's worth it for me to lay down."

"Do not worry about that, my dear. You will sleep." The Angel said, and then began to sing. The notes danced around the room in lazy circles, light, caressing. Lavender and lullabies and safe, soft things.

Her phone beeped an hour later, and the room had a feeling of cool emptiness. The Angel was gone. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, surprised she'd managed to fall asleep at all, but was grateful for the nap. She felt rested. She stood up and stretched luxuriously. A salad and a few chapters of a book later, she arrived at rehearsal a few minutes early. When the clock struck one, Reyer called the company together.

"Thank you, everyone. You put on a great show last night." The crowd clapped, and a bass somewhere let out a deep whoop. "Yes, it's very exciting. The season is off to a great start."

Reyer shuffled the papers in his hands and peered down his nose at them.

"A few notes. First, the tenors came in late at the opening of the third act, so be prepared. Second, a reminder that now that the season has officially started, rehearsals will start at noon and go until 5:30, which should give you enough time to break for dinner and be back, in costume, by curtain."

"What about days with a matinee?" A voice said from somewhere in the crowd of people. Christine turned and saw it was the man who had been speaking with Lyla at the club. She figured he must be New-Guy-Nate, and she was grateful he'd asked for clarification.

"Yes, I was getting to that. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, there will be no rehearsal, but you will still need to arrive at the opera by noon for a warm up before our 2:00 pm matinee." Reyer looked at New-Guy-Nate over his glasses. "Does that answer your question, young man?"

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent. Final note. Next week we will continue rehearsals for our other shows, but for the next few days we will be rehearsing the pieces for the Gala. This will a very exciting show, with a lot of moving parts and big names, so we need to be at our best. That being said, let's get to work!"

The day went quickly, and the choral numbers began to shine. Christine watched happily from the wings as Meg practiced her solo number onstage, and listened in awe as some of her operatic heroes performed live (in front of her!) on stage (a stage they were sharing with her!). They broke for dinner. Christine ate her PB&J and apple in her dressing room as she had the night before. She was less nervous for the show than she had been the previous night, but the joy of being onstage was as strong as ever. Immediately after curtain call, she hastened to her dressing room. She could tell the Angel was there as soon as she opened the door.

"You did well tonight, Miss Daaé."

"Thank you, Maestro."

The Angel proceeded to give her a few notes and pointers to improve her performance. He had her sing a few measures of one of the songs to make sure her inflection and timing were correct.

"Are you very tired, Christine?" the Voice was gentle.

"I'm doing ok." Christine said as she yawned. "I'm sorry, you're right, I stayed out too late last night."

"Yes. Well, I will not keep you for very much longer. I wouldn't want to strain your voice. If you are up to it, would you care to go through the number from Romeo and Juliet once or twice?"

Christine nodded her consent and the Angel led her through the number. Yet again, as she had in the morning, she felt her voice pouring forth in a way that was new. In a way she had never experienced. She felt breathless and spent when the song came to an end, and the Angel dismissed her for the evening.

The next day went much the same. Her lesson with the Angel was startling and wonderful, but she noticed during the matinee that, although she was still singing well, much better than she had when she began at the opera, she was not singing as she had during her lessons that morning, or even the night before. They broke for dinner, and Christine mulled over this thought as she hurried off the stage.

"Chris, hey! Christine!" Meg called from behind her. "Would you like to grab dinner between shows with some of us?"

Christine froze. Was this the sort of invitation she was supposed to run by the Angel? It was technically after a show, even if it was just the matinee. She thought of eating the same PB&J for a third day in a row. Maybe it would be ok?

"Uh, I did bring food…but let me get changed real quick. I'll text you 15 minutes and let you know?" Christine said.

Meg agreed, and the two parted ways. When Christine got to her dressing room, she could tell immediately that the Angel was not there. The dressing room was empty. Christine worried over the question as she took off her costume and wig. She put on a knit cap rather than unbraid her hair, and debated on removing her stage makeup. She couldn't go to dinner looking like a 18th century street urchin, but if she stayed, she wouldn't have to re-apply it, just touch it up.

She looked at her PB&J, closed her eyes to try and feel any sign of the Angel, and grabbed a makeup wipe. It would be fine. This was dinner between shows, this wasn't staying out all night, and it's not as if the Angel wanted to keep her from having friends. She quickly wiped the thick makeup from her face and texted Meg that she would meet her out front.

"Angel? I'm heading out to dinner with Meg." Christine said from the doorway. There was no response.

Meg and Christine joined Lyla and New-Guy-Nate at one of the cafe tables. Nate and Christine began to discuss the best foods to eat before a show, while Lyla and Meg complained about their plain salads.

"So, has anything new happened with Buquet?" Lyla asked Meg.

"Oof," was all Meg said in response.

"That guy is just so..." Lyla trailed off

"What, did someone send you flowers or something?" New-Guy-Nate asked.

"No, no. Not a bouquet. Joseph Buquet." Lyla patted Nate's hand. "He's a stagehand who keeps causing issues."

"What's going on?" Christine said.

"Well, you know how he's been trying to lure girls over to that place under the stage where he said he saw the ghost?" Meg said,

"Yeah?"

"I know not everyone believes in the ghost, but my mom does. She's super worried something bad will happen if Buquet doesn't drop this whole thing."

"Something bad?" Nate sounded incredulous. "I mean, even if there is a ghost, it's not like it can do anything, right?"

"I don't know." Meg looked suddenly uncomfortable. "I just know that things have happened in the past, and my mom felt the need to pull Buquet aside and tell him to leave the ghost alone."

"What happened?" Christine asked.

"He blew her off."

"Oof," Lyla and Christine said in unison.

"I think you guys are making a big deal out of nothing." Nate finished his water. "Come on, we all need to get ready."

o...o0o...o

He wondered what her excuse would be this time.

He should not push it.

He should not make demands that would raise suspicion.

But this girl seemed to insist on spending her time in the company of others. Could she not simply be content to spend her time alone? Or with him? Was an angel's company not good enough for her?

He was between pre-show tasks when he checked the monitors and noticed she wasn't eating in her room. A search of recent footage on his phone showed her leaving with that Giry girl. He tended to his remaining tasks as best he could, but kept checking the feed of her hallway until he saw her. He quickly selected her dressing room on the display and raised the temperature.

He was rather proud of that idea. It really helped sell the whole "angel" shtick.

Often, when time allowed, he would watch her through her mirror. He didn't really question why he did it. Why he allowed himself to do it. If it was smart for him to do it. He liked looking at her. He liked seeing her thoughts play out on her open face. He liked watching her interact with people. He discovered just yesterday how much he enjoyed watching her sleep.

That had proven quite the distraction.

It had really been a struggle to pull himself back into his work after that.

He noticed she had a habit of getting startled if he spoke without first announcing his presence. Time after time! It just kept happening! He enjoyed startling people, of course, it was truly a cherished pastime, but not her. He didn't want to startle her.

The girl just got remarkably lost in her own thoughts.

He had realized he needed to create a new system. Some way to alert her, some way to make the Angel seem more real. He was growing rather fond of this little game and it's intricacies.

He quickly made his way to the space behind the mirror. She paused thoughtfully as she entered the room. He hummed softly. Not an actual melody, nothing she could really hear, just a long, low note. He threw the soft sound toward her as a sort of signal.

She looked at the mirror, just as he knew she would.

"Maestro?"

"I am here."

"Oh, good! I hope you don't mind, but I got dinner with Meg. I tried to tell you before I left, but I don't know if you heard me."

This stopped him short. Hm. He hadn't thought she would bring it up first thing. He had thought she would try to hide or excuse it, or perhaps be so blissfully unaware of her actions that she wouldn't realize she had broken her promise so soon after making it.

"Of course I heard you, child."

Of course he had not. He quickly rewound the footage of her room to just before she left, and he could see her lips moving. Something must be wrong with the mics in her room. Wait. Had he ever put the mics in her room?

"I can always hear when you speak to me." Or he would once he double checked the mic situation and came up with a solution for responding. He much preferred the human touch of throwing his own voice, but in this situation it might be beneficial to install an intercom of some sort, since he was, despite his best efforts, not omnipresent.

He gave her his notes on the matinee and "withdrew" by lowering the temperature in her room by four degrees for an immediate chill upon his departure.

He was nothing if not a showman.

Now, to work.

He hurried down the tunnel away from her room and slipped soundlessly through the walls. The understage was crowded with set pieces and machinery, and he slinked through the shadows they cast, practically a shadow himself. He squeezed through a false wall and moved along a narrow corridor. He knew he was there when he could smell the perfume.

He could barely smell anything at all and the scent was overpowering. How anyone with a . . . better sense of smell could handle it was a mystery.

He looked through a discreet peephole, craftily hidden in the design of the wallpaper, and saw the room was blessedly empty.

The perfume was giving him a headache. What a reek there must be of musk and geraniums and sandalwood if she was not even nearby and and the scent was this strong. Had she doused the rug in the stuff?

With a series of gentle taps in specific places he cracked open a panel of the wall. He withdrew an envelope of creamy paper and checked the name on the front before reaching through the panel and propping the missive prominently on her desk.

A first warning for Miss Lana Carlotta.

He snapped the panel closed, slipped down the hall, and pulled himself up a knotted rope until he was high enough to slide into the vents. He slid through these with practiced ease, chimneying up a vertical shaft and sliding carefully through the vents high above the lobby, where all the world below was gathered in their finery. He let himself down another vertical shaft in a controlled fall, and navigated through the vents until he was directly above the outgoing mail basket in the main office. He slipped another note for Lana Carlotta from his jacket pocket, this one addressed to her home, and dropped it from the vent where it landed in the box with a soft rustle of paper.

He exited the vents and worked his way towards the private offices. In the office of his dear, departing managers there was an armoire "too heavy to move" (i.e. screwed into the wall, years ago, by him), with a false back that opened into his tunnels.

It truly was a shame that Debienne and Poligny were leaving. He knew how to play the buffoons so beautifully. The thought of training two new simpletons wearied him. How long would it take to break them? What chaos would it wreak upon his opera? How many accidents until they learned they were not in charge?

It was all so exhausting.

But whatever happened, he had his star. His ace up his sleeve, and if all went according to plan, which it would, she would make an impression that the new management would be unable to ignore.

He pushed into the closet and listened through the closed doors. When he was sure the room was empty, he crept into the office and left his final notes. One prominently displayed on the desk, the other taped to the whiskey bottle in the bottom drawer.

He would miss these two idiots and their predictability.

The door to the office rattled, and he bounded for the armoire, pulling the doors almost closed just as the office door opened. The secretary put something in a filing cabinet before turning off the light and locking the door. The doors of the armoire latched with a gently pull, and he slid the false back shut behind him.

He twisted and slid through the narrow halls until he arrived in the hollow space next adjacent his box. He grabbed a lint roller from a small shelf and tidied the dust from his suit and cape. He loved a good cape like he loved a lair, and he would never attend his opera anything less than impeccably dressed. He owed it to himself.

He sat in the velvet chair he had moved into the hollow space and slid open a panel that looked down to the stage. Studying the audience, he tried to guess what sort of crowd they were. He felt for a latch on the wall near him and sprung open what looked like a mail slot. Without taking his eyes from the crowd, he slid the program left for him on the shelf through the slot and left a tip in its place.

The audience seemed like it would be an attentive one. He flipped through the program. There was a grammatical error on the seventh page that would need to be corrected, and he did not like the layout of the ads on pages nine and twelve. They cheapened the look of the program. The businesses would need to submit a new design or he would have the spaces sold to someone else. The pages fell open to the cast bios, and he trailed his finger across her name.

 _Christine Daaé._

He traced the letters absentmindedly as the show began. Traced them again and again until the letters felt carved into his brain. He closed his eyes and tried to pick her voice out from the chorus.

There.

She was in good voice tonight.

The curtain rose and fell, rose and fell. Bows were taken. He moved from the hollow chamber into the shadows of the box and cheered for her, in the open, as any other man might. She was flushed, smiling, as she came into the dressing room, chattering away in that pretty voice of hers while she removed her makeup. He traced her profile absentmindedly on the glass, traced it again and again as she shook her hair from it's braids and talked about her plans for her day off.

He had her sing Carlotta's number from the Gala. This was the most important aspect of the plan.

"Give yourself over to the music, Miss Daaé! Let it sweep through you, power you, run away with you! Passion is the heart of music!"

She made a visible effort to sing...louder.

"No! Not volume! Feeling! If you feel nothing, the music is empty! A shell. You are not an automaton. You _are_ Juliet, and your lover is dead. He is gone forever! How does that feel?"

Her eyes snapped to his as though she could see him, and his mouth went dry.

"How does it feel, Christine?" His voice thundered through the room.

She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and when they opened again, she was Juliet. She was sorrow incarnate. Her eyes filled with tears. Her whole body seemed to tremble. Her voice ripped him to shreds. It poured over him, through him, tracing his veins again and again until the sound was carved into his marrow. He knew her voice would be a part of him until the day he died.

The song ended, and there was silence for a long moment, the sound of their combined breathing all he could hear. She seemed to deflate. It was late now, later than he should have kept her, and her eyes were weary.

"You have done well, Miss Daaé. Go home and rest."

He waited for a few moments after she left the room before making his way quickly down, down, down and to the subway tunnel. He watched her from a distance until she was safely home, then headed deeper into the city.

There was one, final failsafe to arrange, and as he handed a small vial to a tired looking woman in a maid's uniform, he allowed satisfaction to wash over him.

o...o0o...o

The day of the gala arrived, and Christine breathed in the crisp morning air as she walked across the plaza to the opera. A nervous energy hummed through her as she made her way to her dressing room, a queasy sort of excitement. She thought of her last few lessons with the Angel of Music and her heart seemed to turn over in her chest.

She hadn't known she could do that.

She hadn't known she could sound like that. Sing like that. Even when her father was alive she had never done what she had done.

It was strange and wonderful and . . . terrifying, if she was being honest with herself. The music she created frightened her. She had stood in front of the mirror, she had watched herself sing.

she didn't recognize her own reflection

but she couldn't stay away

she wanted more

More of the music. More of the release. More of the power she felt as the music thundered through her. Music she created. For so long she had felt adrift. Weak. Small. Alone. But this. This made her feel strong.

Her dressing room felt empty, and she took a moment to stretch and enjoy the tea she had brought from home. There was a sudden rush of warmth and a feeling in her bones that she wasn't alone.

"Good morning, Miss Daaé." The Angel's voice floated through the room

"Good morning, Maestro."

She went through a series of warm ups, and the Angel instructed her through a few tricky measures from The Marriage of Figaro. For the majority of the lesson, however, the Angel focused primarily on the piece from Romeo and Juliet.

"That will be all for today, Miss Daaé. You've shown remarkable improvement."

"Thank you, Maestro."

"Yes, remarkable improvement," the Angel repeated as though he had not heard her. "I suggest you prepare. It will not be long before some opportunity or another presents itself."

"Are you sure I'm ready?" The nervous energy had settled into a hard ball in the pit of her stomach.

"Oh, yes, my dear. You are ready. And when the opportunity presents itself, you must seize it." There was a fever-colored warmth in the Angel's tone. "Do you understand, Christine?"

"Yes?"

"Even if you are frightened. Even if you are unsure. You must seize the chance when given to you. Will you do that? Will you do that for your Angel?"

Christine studied the mirror, wishing she could see the Angel of Music. Wishing she could understand why the question felt so heavy. She nodded.

"Good. That is good."

With a rush the room cooled, and Christine knew the Angel was gone.

Rehearsal went as usual, save for the palpable excitement that flooded the company as star after operatic star came to the stage for their numbers. Plácido Domingo, Andrea Bocelli, Renée Fleming, Measha Brueggergosman and more. When Reyer called for rehearsal to wrap, the chorus swarmed the singers.

Christine was in the huddle surrounding Audra McDonald when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned.

"Miss Daaé? You are needed in the manager's office," the stagehand said.

Christine nodded and left the stage, perplexed. What could the managers want with her? She couldn't imagine. She knew she was singing better now, pulling her weight. Would the managers bother firing anyone on their last day? Perhaps they were pulling everyone aside.

Christine greeted the secretary, who shot shot Christine a bemused look before showing her into the office.

How it had changed! There was a starkness to it now that the photographs and plaques had been removed. A series of boxes sat against one wall with the names Firman and Moncharmin scrawled in sharpie on the sides.

Debienne stared out of the office window, hands in his pockets, and did not turn when she entered. Poligny was pale and drawn, his hair disheveled as though he had been recently tugging at it. Two empty glasses were on the desk, and as Christine drew closer she thought she could smell whiskey.

"Please be seated, Miss Daaé," said Poligny. His voice was cold. She sat. "You may have noticed that Lana Carlotta was not at rehearsal today."

Christine thought for a moment. She'd been so excited to see the renowned singers perform that she had not noticed the diva's absence. She nodded.

"According to her assistant, she has fallen ill-" Poligny paused a moment as Debienne scoffed from his place at the window. "She has fallen ill and will not be able to sing tonight."

Christine said made a sympathetic sound, but she was still unsure as to why she was there. No one spoke for a moment. Poligny stared at her expectantly.

"Did you want...I mean...would you like me to relay that message to the chorus, or Mr. Reyer?"

Debienne let out a single, harsh laugh. He crossed to the desk and pulled a bottle of whiskey from a drawer, poured himself a glass, and threw it back in one swallow. He slammed the glass on the desk before finally looking at Christine.

"You will be taking her place."

Christine looked from one man to the other. No one spoke.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Carlotta is ill. You will be singing in her place. It's not that difficult." Debienne crossed back to the window.

"I can't do that." Christine's head started to buzz.

"I'm assuming you know the aria from Romeo and Juliet?" Poligny said, ignoring her.

"I mean, I do, but-"

"Then be ready at curtain."

"I…" Christine trailed off. Her face grew hot as Poligny stared coldly back at her. She looked down at the floor, tears starting to prick at her eyes. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, forcing the feeling away.

"Miss Daaé?" Poligny's tone was a modicum warmer. "You weren't expecting this, were you?"

Christine shook her head, and the manager's shot each other a look she could not read. Debienne shook his head and looked back to the window.

"I'm sure you will do splendidly, Miss Daaé," Poligny said, kinder now, but resigned. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

Christine careened down the hallways without really seeing. She couldn't do this. She couldn't do this. She. Could not. Do this. A woman with a measuring tape draped around her neck stopped Christine near the stage and pulled her into the costume room. The woman held a variety of dresses up to Christine before settling on a long, sparkling sheath dress in red. Christine changed into the dress and smoothed her hand over the material, shedding glitter as she did so.

"Turn," the costumer said, observing Christine with a critical eye. "Do you have another bra here?"

Christine reached behind and swept her hand across her back. The dress dipped too low and she could feel her exposed bra. She shook her head.

The costumer asked her size and rifled through a selection of undergarments before shaking her head.

"I don't have anything here that will work. Just remember high school theater." The woman smiled and handed Christine a pair of long black gloves, dangling earrings, and black heels. "Never turn your back to the audience."

Christine tried to smile, but didn't know if her face obeyed. The woman told her someone had been brought in for hair and makeup that night, and to report to them right away. Christine hurried a few rooms down the hall. As she sat in the makeup chair, she thought vaguely of dinner, but her stomach cramped at the thought. Once finished, she tried to make her way to her dressing room. She needed a minute to breathe. She needed to speak to the Angel. His words from earlier tumbled around in her mind, but it was too soon. This couldn't be the opportunity he meant.

Reyer pulled her aside before she got very far. He had her run through the song. Christine sang mechanically, but hit the proper notes. Reyer didn't seem terribly impressed, which made her feel even worse. Before he dismissed her, he gave her several pointers that fell out of her brain almost as soon as she heard them, and told her when and where she would be coming in.

"Wait, don't I need to get changed for the group numbers?" Christine said, desperate for any excuse to get to her dressing room. Talk to the Angel. Breathe.

"No. You're excused from the choral numbers this evening. Now, you know when you go on, but stick close to the stage." Reyer smiled and patted her shoulder. "You're our wild card, and we might need to do some shuffling."

Christine nodded wordlessly and Reyer hurried away. Oh gosh. Oh no. This was happening and she had no way to stop it.

Backstage was crowded, and Christine could hear the murmurs of the audience. There was no time to do anything. The show began.

Christine stuck close to the wings, near the stage manager. Her stomach felt hollow, her limbs the same. Her heart echoed in her empty body and her shallow breaths knitted knots in her lungs.

Some of the chorus members shot her strange looks as they filed on and off stage, but there wasn't enough time to explain between numbers and costume changes, and even if they asked, she didn't know if she could speak.

She tried to focus her breathing, as the Angel had taught her. She tried to remember the advice the Voice had given her on opening night. Everything was a blur, but this was happening. She needed to pull herself together, and she only had one thread clasped in her fist.

 _The Angel thinks I'm ready._

The stage manager was saying something to someone nearby. As Maria Agresta, one of the world's foremost Italian sopranos, strode onstage, Christine managed to dimly grasp that intermission would be called when the song was over.

Air. She needed air. She need to be alone. Gather her thoughts. Maybe there was still time to-

Meg began to work her way towards Christine, a worried look on her face.

No, she couldn't speak right now, not even to Meg. Not to anyone, except maybe the Angel, and she needed air. She needed space. She needed light.

Christine pushed off the wall and darted towards the stage doors. She opened them slowly to keep them silent, and closed them behind her more slowly still.

She began to breathe easier in the open hall. She was on the opposite side of the opera from her dressing room, and she could not stand the thought of crossing backstage. The more circuitous route through the lobby was her only option.

Her heart rate slowed as she began to cross the mostly empty lobby, her heels clicking a staccato beat that echoed faintly in the open space. She focused on that sound until a man slipped through a door to her right.

The slope of his shoulders was as familiar as home, and the way he put his hands in his pockets shot her back to another time. The staccato beat stopped.

She had to get out of there.

She backtracked a few steps then wheeled away from Raoul de Chagny.

Doors opened all around her, people spilling into the lobby for intermission. Christine worked her way back towards the stage doors against the current, praying he didn't see her. Wishing that he had. Hating herself for wanting the impossible. She thought she heard someone calling her name. Maybe it was Raoul. Maybe it was the Angel. Maybe it was no one at all.

Christine darted to the left and pushed open an employee-only door. She took the short flight of steps as quickly as her heels would allow, and pushed open the door to the understage area.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the dark wall for support. A million thoughts flitted through her mind. She needed to get to her dressing room. There might be time for her to go and come back. Isn't this where they said the ghost lives? Raoul looked very handsome in grey. The basement was dark. How much time had passed? Enough? Too much? She needed to be quick. Intermission would be over soon if she wasn't quick.

She picked her way carefully across the dimly lit space, not noticing the huddled group of people until she was almost upon them. She tried to squeeze past them politely until she saw him.

Joseph Buquet.

Strung up and swinging gently as though someone had just given him a push.

It took a long moment for the sight to register. Dead. Dead. He was dead. He'd been hanged and he was dead and there were a million people above them and nobody knew that there were dancing above a dead man. Her insides cramped. Her mouth went dry and just as quickly filled with saliva as her empty stomach heaved. She pushed away from the sight and stumbled against a wall, retching, but nothing came out.

She ran dizzily back the way she had came, falling against the door to open it, tripping up the stairs. She might have bruised her knee at one point, but she felt very little. She pushed through the thinning crowd towards the stage door, looking for someone, anyone, she had to report a crime. She had to report a murder. There was a dead man in the basement and no one seemed to care.

Someone grabbed her by her arm.

Her thoughts seemed to focus on the man's face. Did she know him? Could he help? Like a child putting together a simple puzzle with great difficulty, she realized it was one of the new managers.

"Joseph Buquet," she started as the man dragged her toward the stage, "he's dead! He's downstairs and–"

"I found her," the man called to someone. Christine could see the house lights dim and brighten, dim and brighten as intermission came to an end. The stage glowed brightly through the wings.

"He's dead! We have to help him!" Christine said. Had she said it out loud? Was anyone listening?

"You have to go on now." The new manager pushed her toward the stage.

"I can't sing, we have to get help–"

"There is a full house. You have sixty seconds to get yourself together."

"But Joseph Buquet–"

"Get. On. Stage. Miss Daaé. I will not ask you again! We know about the stagehand! Do want there to be a panic?"

Christine shook her head.

"Then I suggest you do your job," the man flung his arm toward the stage, "and sing."

The stage manager pushed an in-ear monitor into Christine's hand, which she stuck in her ear as the make-up artist powered her face. The host finished droning something she couldn't understand onstage, and there was a polite clapping.

She forced one step, then another until she reached center stage. The stage was bright, bright enough to blind, but darkness ate at the edges of her vision.

Joseph Buquet was dead.

She didn't even like him and he was dead. Was she allowed to not like someone who was dead? Was that disrespectful? Did that make her a bad person? Did wondering if she was a bad person in the wake of someone else's death make her a bad person?

She could see him swinging in her mind. She could see her father, cold and pale the night she found him. A thousand conflicting thoughts, a thousand memories flitted through her mind like bats or birds, wicked winged things.

Whispers trickled in through earpiece. The musicians knew? Her opening notes played and she heard someone say the rope was gone, missing, it had disappeared before the cops showed up.

The music swelled, and she fixed everything on one dim, fading star.

 _The Angel was listening._

She had to make him proud. The eyes of the audience felt like a physical presence. Let them stare. Her heart and mind screamed that she was not ready. Let them scream. She could not fail the Angel.

The Angel had never failed her.

So she sang to him.

 _She sang._

 _She sang._

 _She sang._

With everything she had inside of her, every passing thought, every reminder of Joe's face, her father's face, cold hands, blue lips, the horror of falling back to where she had been, the few moments of joy she'd wrung from life since, she sang to the Angel of Music.

She poured all of it out, to him, a gift, to him, a thank you, to him. All that mattered, the only thing that could matter, was music.

She felt herself fading as the song wound to a close, and she threw out her arms in the exuberance of the final moments, perhaps her final moments, because she could not breath and death was everywhere, and as the note echoed in the air, she opened her eyes and saw the audience clapping. Everyone standing. Raoul, in his box, dumbstruck and smiling and there.

She collapsed to the sound of thunderous applause.

o...o0o...o

The gray and the tulle and the whispers slipped away. The world was color and hard and real and the most beautiful boy she'd ever seen was holding her hand and looking at her with such gentleness, as if she was something precious, and for a moment, in that shimmering gloaming as she came back to herself, she allowed herself to look gently back. He asked her then, as he held her hand, if she remembered him, the boy who went into the sea to save her scarf.

The moment ended.

All at once she was aware of the cold eye of the mirror. She could not know him. She must not know him. He was an old friend from a different time, a different path, a different life where things were better and perfect and she wasn't so terribly alone. And she could not know him.

She told him no.

It hurt to see his face fall. It hurt to hurt him, but it was better this way. The mirror stared at her, hard and cold and smooth and he should leave. He should go. He needed to leave. He needed to go. But no, he was not going. Instead he asked, too earnestly, too sweetly, if he could speak, they must speak, and he needed to leave, her mind screaming, begging him to get out of here before he got her into trouble, before he ruined everything, and she loved the feel of his hand in hers but his hand was not hers to hold.

She got them all out of the room. The doctor and Meg and Raoul. The room was empty. She was empty. She was a little doll made of porcelain. She could crack at any moment, and the only thing she could think of to relieve the pressure building inside her was to say everything she was feeling out loud.

o...o0o...o

He watched her panic when she found the camera on.

Of course the camera was on.

This was an important moment.

Her first triumph.

She would want to remember this forever.

Everything went so perfectly. So according to plan. To a point. Every detail, every step, the note in the whiskey drawer and the "bad shrimp" in Carlotta's lunch.

And Christine…

She had been transcendent.

He had known she had talent. He had known she had promise. He had seen her improve, watched her grow, especially these last few lessons, but this…

This was something else entirely.

He could still feel her voice reverberating in his bones.

Everything, almost everything, had gone so perfectly.

She wasn't supposed to see Joseph Buquet.

She was supposed to find out about the opportunity he had painstakingly created and come back to her dressing room with that happy, excited expression on her face, the one that burst like a sunrise in his chest. She would be nervous, but he would have soothed her.

She never came to her dressing room.

Oh, he knew why, and he understood. It was an unexpected change, and the little people would scurry about in a panic. He could tell she was shaken by the offer, but he knew she was capable.

Then she had seen Joseph Buquet.

The man deserved it. It was not Erik's fault. The stagehand was always about, always in the way, always trying to see him. Erik could not risk it. The man should not have dared to tamper with trapdoors when he knew not what lay beneath.

Oh, but her face.

Her sweet face.

He had instructed Reyer to keep her near the stage. What had she been doing beneath it? She had no business being there. It was dirty work, but necessary, and he hated that she had seen it. He watched as she stumbled onto the scene, distracted and anxious, and for a moment, from the shadows, he wished he was man enough to smooth her brow.

The body did that for him.

Her face had gone completely blank. It was like Christine was gone. Vacant and vapid and staring until she fled. The dancers and stage hands soon followed, and as soon as the space was empty, he cut the rope loose and darted to his box.

She sang.

She fell.

It was terrible to see, like death, like himself, a candle snuffed out and he recoiled in horror.

But she was alright. She was fine. She was breathing, he could see that through the mirror. He wished again that he could smooth his fingers across her brow, brush the dark hair out of her eyes. He would wake her with singing. Just him. Just her. No doctors, no dancers.

No other men.

No other men holding her hand.

No other handsome men looking at her like that.

He watched the expression he so coveted dawn on her face when she looked at that boy. The simpering, earnest boy. He watched her remember. He watched her lie. He watched them all leave.

He pulled his violin from where he had left it earlier in the day and played to warn her of the Angel's arrival. She panicked at the sound, a little rabbit in a trap, grabbed a scarf, but not THAT scarf, and threw it over the camera.

His eyes tracked her through the room. Why she didn't simply turn the thing off was a mystery.

"You were a triumph tonight, Christine," he said. She tried to deny it, to claim she failed because she fainted. She wasn't stupid, but she could be exceedingly dim when it came to her own talents. He was not disappointed in her, she was not weak. He wanted to tell her so but the sight of the red scarf hanging on her changing screen was driving him mad.

"I believe your young friend Raoul was here tonight?"

'Raoul? What do you mean, I don't think he was..." she said. Lying again! As if she could fool him! Did she think the Angel could not see?

"He said he was the one who saved your red scarf? And," He pushed on, not pausing for a response, wanting the truth, wanting her to realize that Erik could not be lied to, "if Raoul is just an 'old friend,' if he means nothing to you, why didn't you say you recognized him?"

She said nothing.

"Were you lying to your angel?"

She said nothing.

"Do you want to leave your music and pursue him?" His heart was pounding in his chest as she looked at the mirror, not at him, never at him, and the words slipped out of his broken mouth before he could stop them. "Don't you love me at all, Christine?"

Love? Love? Had he just spoken of love? How could he say that. He was mistaken. He was her teacher. He had never, not since, he did not allow himself, could not, was not worthy, wanted but shouldn't, not a man not a real man not him not any woman and especially not her and her face crumpled at his question and

"How can you say that? How can you ask me that, when I sing only for you?" The truth. He could see it all over her open face. Did that mean she loved him? "You're the one who helped me find my voice when I thought . . . when I thought I'd never really sing again."

No. No, she loved the Angel of Music. Only the Angel. But he was the Angel, and she sang for him.

"Are you very tired?"

"Tonight I gave you my soul and I am dead." The words flung from her lips. He chose not to hear the harshness of her tone.

She sang only for him. Her voice, her music, tonight, that was a gift. It was his. She had given it to him.

"Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, no emperor received so fair a gift." The whole of the English language, all the dialects of the world could not convey the feeling rushing through him. "The angels wept tonight."

He played his tricks to make it seem as if he had left. Watched as she pulled the scarf from the camera and draped it over her shoulders. She left. He sank to the floor to bask in this evening. In his triumph.

Too soon his reverie was broken at the sound of the opening door. Had she returned? He stood.

No.

No.

It was not her. It was that boy. That boy entered. Entered this room! Her room! The room Erik had given her! Entered as if he belonged!

He might have to kill him.

Might need to rip the nose off his perfect face.

The idiot boy was looking for something. Someone. He seemed to think there was someone still in the room after Christine, Erik's Christine, had gone. He watched the boy explore the room. He watched him notice the camera on the desk. Watched him turn the camera off as if he had some right to do so. Watched him leave.

Did the fool boy dare to look for him?

Let him look.

Let him seek.

Dirty work but necessary.


	12. Letter Twelve - Aftermath

Letter Twelve - Aftermath

She is reaching, reaching, reaching. Bottles made of blue and green and sky yellow, smokey and smooth from the sand the sand the buffeting sand. Her fingers touch one, it moves, another, it moves.

Behind her is a shadow she ignores. She touches a yellow bottle, a yellow bottle bobbing in the cloudy gray water, cloudy gray water reflecting the sky. The shadow is closer now, is darker now, and isn't that papa's handwriting, there, inside the yellow bottle?

She feels something wrap around her feet, her waist, vines that are not vines. Cords. Ropes. Snakes with nooses instead of heads and now she is not looking at the bottles or the grey sky. They are gone and it is dark and she hears a terrible sound, thick and wet and heavy. Joseph Buquet falls from above, his body crumpled at her feet, and she is in the red dress again and she is running but he is still by her feet and he's grabbing her, grabbing her feet, grabbing her hands. His face bloated, blue, but not like the bottles, not like the long gone bottles are blue, his lips dark, his tongue darker and she can't move her arms. "I am the angel of music" his dead mouth says without moving and

Christine woke with a start, skin damp with sweat, breaths coming in panicked gasps. Her eyes darted around the room, taking comfort in the familiarity. Desk, dresser, closet, and Mr. Stuffins in his place of honor on the armchair. The streetlight outside lined everything in orange. She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at the clock.

3:00 AM.

She sunk back onto her pillows and closed her eyes. Joseph Buquet's face. Her eyes popped back open. She closed her eyes again. Joseph Buquet's face again. It occurred to her that the ceiling was lovely, and much less frightening, and hadn't been stared at properly in a long time. After a while, she turned her bedside lamp on. She prayed. She read verses from the bible about comfort and not being afraid.

She closed her eyes, and saw him swinging under the stage.

She left the lamp on and curled into herself.

o...o0o...o

"Excuse me, Officer?" Police tape blocked off an area of about 20-feet in front of the opera doors, and Christine waved to one of the cops milling about in the space. "I need to get inside."

"No comment, and no reporters. Please step back, miss."

"Oh, no. I'm not a– I work here?"

"Opera's closed until further notice. I'm sure someone will inform you when it reopens." The cop started to leave, but turned back to face her. "Were you here last night?"

"Yeah."

"One second." The cop turned away from Christine and spoke into his radio. He listened for a moment, responded, then turned and lifted the tape. "Come with me."

Christine hurried after the officer, breathing a sigh of relief as they entered the lobby. She started towards her dressing room. She'd just get to her room, talk to the–

"Miss? Please follow me." The cop, holding open the office door, motioned her through. She changed course, slowly, confused. He pointed to a chair outside the manager's door. "Wait here."

Christine pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened her email. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. The most recent email was from Reyer to the company, informing them about the opera closure. She let her head fall into her hand and rubbed at her eyes. She'd been so tired this morning, so drained from the gala and the…

She shuddered, unable to focus on the dreams from last night. She'd only fallen asleep after the sun rose, and her alarm went off what felt like moments later. She should have checked her email.

She just wanted to talk to the Angel.

"Miss Daae?" One of the new managers gestured for her to come in. The office was crowded with both sets of managers and a grizzled man at the end of middle-aged who had taken over the desk. A younger man in a suit was leaning against the wall by the window, hands on his hips, and Christine could see the badge and gun normally concealed beneath his blazer. In another corner stood David Peirson, regarding her evenly. The manager motioned for Christine to sit in the chair opposite the man.

"My name is Detective Anatole, that's my partner, Detective Destler," the man nodded towards the suit at the window before clasping his hands and resting them on the desk. Destler flipped a notepad to a new page, "and I'll be asking you a few questions about last night. Name?"

"Christine Daae."

"Occupation?"

"Singer? I mean, uh...Operatic Soprano at the Met." She could see the detective by the window taking note of her answers.

"It's our understanding that you were one of the people who discovered the body–"

Christine let out a strangled gasp.

"I didn't discover the body! I was just–just trying to get to the other side of the stage... I mean, I did...see...the body, but there were already a bunch of people there."

The room fell quiet at her outburst, and she squeezed her hands into fists in her lap.

"Of course, Miss Daae. We're just trying to get an accurate timeline of events. We have several witnesses who said they saw you at the crime scene, as well as a statement from Mr. Firman here that you told him about the body before you went on stage. Is that correct?"

Christine nodded.

"Very good. Now..." The detective stared at her for a long moment as his partner scribbled away on his pad. "Why don't you just start at...say 5pm and walk me through your evening."

Christine told him everything, from the cast change, the costumer, all the way to her collapse onstage. The detective nodded to his partner by the window and stood. Christine stood quickly as well.

"Thank your time, Miss Daae." He opened the door. "We'll contact you if we have any further questions."

Christine was out the door and down the hall before the whole scenario caught up with her. Had she just been questioned in a murder investigation? Why had she freaked out like that? Were they going to try and pin the murder on her? She couldn't hang anybody, she was too short! Thoughts cartwheeled through her mind as astounding speeds, and more than ever she wanted to speak to the Angel. There was an officer posted by the door that led backstage.

"Excuse me," Christine said as she approached the woman, "I need to run to my dressing room...would that be ok?"

"Backstage is off-limits until the investigation is complete." The woman's tone brooked no argument.

Christine murmured some sort of response and found herself outside, found herself on the subway, found herself walking down a sun-dappled path in Central Park until she found herself sitting on the stone edge of the Bethesda Fountain.

The cool of the stone seeped through her jeans, making her shiver. Several leaves skittered over the toes of her boots as she lost herself in the intricacies of the cracks in the concrete. What was she going to do? A horrible weight settled in her stomach as she thought of the Angel, waiting and waiting and she unable to come.

What a disappointment she must be.

The glare of the stage, the creak of the rope, the feeling of the floor rising up to meet her flickered across her mind and she dropped her head into her hands.

Her phone pinged, and with a small groan, Christine pulled it from her pocket, a Twitter notification glowing on her screen. The anxious weight that had settled in her stomach changed, turned over, began to zip around inside of her with a feeling distinctly reminiscent of rainbows and glitter and that time in 6th Grade when Ricky Feinburg asked her to dance! She fumbled with the home button, and the phone danced across the backs of her nervous fingers, tipping out of her hands and tumbling towards the fountain. A series of small bats and one very good catch later, Christine pulled the phone away from danger, swiped open the screen, and pulled up the message.

 _Hey Christine! Sorry to slide into your DMs, haha, but I wasn't sure if you still had the same number. Things were weird last night, and I just wanted to apologize if I made you uncomfortable. Hope you are feeling better!_

 _This is Raoul, by the way._

After a series of several very subdued squeals, Christine took a deep breath and started to type.

 _Hey Raoul! How are you? And no worries! Last night was weird in general, it had nothing to do with you. You're good!_

The phone pinged again just a few moments later.

 _Good to hear. Hey, if you're feeling up to it, wanna grab a cup of coffee? I'm free whenever tomorrow and it would be great to catch up._

Christine looked up at the sky and tried to push down her excitement. Her insides were now humming with that feeling she got from watching the hand flex scene in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, and she knew needed to rein it in. This was nothing. Not a big deal. She had some free time, they'd been close once, it was nothing more than two friends catching up.

In fact, it was so chill, so not a big deal, that she actually didn't even care to go. She wouldn't go. It would probably be boring and awkward anyway.

 _Yeah! Sure thing! That would be great! Does 10am work? I know of a super cool cafe!_

Or she would go! Either way, not a big deal! Christine knocked the phone against her forehead in rapid succession. The phone pinged.

 _That sounds great! Send me the address and I'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait!_

Christine sent the address to Raoul and felt herself smiling. It was nothing. Nothing. Just coffee with a friend, but that heavy feeling lifted. The memory of the night before dimmed. The long, open day before her no longer felt like a trial. The Angel would understand why she couldn't make it, right?

The smell of hot pretzels wafted by and reminded her that she had not eaten since the night before the Gala. She crossed to the pretzel cart and bought one. She took the subway to the museum and spent the rest of the morning there. She ran some errands, bought a new top, and picked up dinner for herself and Mamma V. They made popcorn and watched a couple rom-coms.

Mamma Valerius smoothed the hair back from Christine's face and kissed her on the forehead as they were saying goodnight.

"I haven't seen you this happy in a while," the old woman said, her eyes soft. "Sweet dreams, dear."

Christine gave Mamma a kiss on the cheek in return and made her way to her room. She changed into clean pajamas and washed her face before pulling up the messages from Raoul. She smiled around her toothbrush as she read them, and smiled as she read them again just before turning out her lamp.

But then she was reaching, reaching, reaching. The bottles made of blue and green and sky yellow, smokey and smooth from the sand the sand the buffeting sand. Her fingers touched one, it moved, another, it moved.

If she turned to this side of the bed, would it help?

The shadow was still behind her. She still ignored it, but this time she knew the shadow. She touched a yellow bottle, bobbing in the cloudy gray water, cloudy gray water reflecting the sky. The shadow closer now, darker now, and wasn't that papa's handwriting, there, inside the yellow one?

The sheets were sticky with her sweat and she hated it. She could feel herself turning over, she could feel that she was in bed. She knew it was a dream, but that knowledge was useless. She was trapped, trapped, trapped amongst the bottles she could not reach and the shadow she could not escape.

Until...

Gently, gently, there was a new sound. Warm and soft and curling at the edges. It twisted between the bottles, around the foaming water at her feet, and she knew without looking that the shadow was gone. The song grew a little louder, a little sweeter, circling her head and tickling at her ears.

She woke with a soft gasp, and the song was still there. She was sure of it. She threw the sweat-damp sheets off of her legs and stumbled blearily to the window, flipping the lock open and raising the sash, but by the time the cool night air hit her face, the sound was gone. The fire escape was empty, the street below vacant save for a pair of tiny figures she could see crossing the street blocks and blocks away.

She stayed at the window for a long moment before she shut it and returned to bed. She fell asleep with the song still playing in her head and did not dream for the rest of the night.

o...o0o...o

Christine pushed her way up the stairs and out on the sidewalk. The October air was crisp and cool as she weaved between a set of tourists gaping at buildings looming above them and hastened toward the cafe. It was 9:35 am, and she figured she would have enough time to find a table and tamp down the ever-persistent butterflies plaguing her stomach before Raoul arrived. She pulled open the door and stepped inside the cafe, taking in warmth and the mingled smell of old books and coffee. She pulled off her gloves and began to unwind the red scarf from around her throat.

"Christine!" She turned at the sound of her name and saw Raoul waving from a small table in the corner. "Over here."

She started toward the table, and Raoul rose to meet her, crossing the room in rapid strides before catching her up in a hug, the momentum almost lifting her off her feet. She laughed as they parted, breathless. His hair was styled differently, his suit a more expensive cut, but his smile was the same.

"It's great to see you!" They headed to the counter to order their drinks.

"Yeah. Yeah!" Raoul gestured to the book-laden walls around them. "This place is really cool."

"It is! This is one of my favorite places." She explained how she had found the bookstore-turned-cafe one afternoon a few years ago, and how it had been her go-to spot ever since. The barista called out their drinks and they headed back to the table.

She told him more about the cafe, and he told her about his favorite spot, which led to favorite restaurants, which led to favorite foods. Conversation came as easily as it always had, and they lost time, talking together. He updated her on his life, she updated him on hers. Christine found herself laughing more that day than she had in months.

When she told Raoul about her father's passing, he placed his hand on hers, and they sat that way in silence for a long moment.

"I'm really sorry, Christine. He was a great man."

The sensation of his hand on hers, so steady, so comforting, inured her momentarily to the alarm bell ringing in the back of her mind that he had been touching her for too long, much too long, way too long for a friend.

She slid her hand from beneath his on the pretense of wiping her misty eyes. Perhaps not so much pretense as need.

"So, uh...ha," she said, taking a shaky breath. "What did you need to tell me?"

"Hmm?" Raoul looked at her, confused.

"In my dressing room the other night. You said you had something important to tell me?"

"Oh! Oh, yes. I was...well, what I was going to say–"

"I'm really sorry, by the way. For saying I didn't recognize you," she said, scrambling for some explanation to give him that didn't involve the Angel. "I just felt so muddled, you know, and didn't want to let– I mean wasn't expecting to see my...friend. My old friend. You! You, my good, old friend."

She rubbed at a spot above her eyebrow and hoped her smile was sufficiently hiding that fact that she was screaming inside.

"Good, old friend. Right. Yeah," Raoul laughed too, but it sounded forced. "Uh, it wasn't anything important. I just...wanted to say how great it was to see you. Ask if you wanted to catch up."

"Oh...ok then. Mission accomplished, I guess."

"Yeah, I suppose."

A strangled hush descended on the table, and the two nodded awkwardly at each other until Raoul broke the silence.

"So you're, like, really good at singing."

Christine laughed.

"I mean, really great. You were always fantastic, but the other night...that was something else."

The somewhat heavy mood lifted, and they finished their drinks. Raoul offered to walk her home, and they chatted comfortably as they made their way out of the cafe to the subway, and from the subway to the falafel cart Raoul insisted was the best in the city, and from the cart to the subway again. It was late afternoon by the time Raoul deposited her at her front door.

"It was really great to see you, Christine."

"You too, Raoul."

They shifted closer to each other, each a sun drawing the other in. That tiny, warning bell began ringing in the back of Christine's mind.

"Really, really great," said Raoul, softly.

"Really, really great," Christine repeated.

Raoul leaned in towards her, and she leaned in towards him, and a million things flitted through her mind. A moonlit beach, sun-kissed sand, a red strip of cloth and a waterlogged suit and warning bells warning bells warning, the angel threatening to leave forever if she –

In a flash, she clapped Raoul on the shoulder and shook his hand vigorously.

"Well, it was...great! Ha Ha! Great to see you. Do keep in touch."

Then she fled up the stairs and slammed the door behind her.

"Oh, stupid stupid stupid stupid!" She muttered quickly, and knocked her forehead against the door in rhythm with her chant. Pausing, she stole a glance through the peephole in time to see Raoul's bewildered expression before he shook his head and took off down the street. "Stupid stupid stupid stupid."

She turned and slid down the door until she was seated. Well. At least it hadn't all been bad. Christine smiled to herself for a moment before the phone buzzed in her hand.

An email from Reyer. The Opera would reopen the next day.

o...o0o...o

"A moment of your time, please!" Reyer tapped his baton on his music stand and gestured for the crowd to quiet themselves. "A moment of your time, everyone."

The entire company was gathered onstage, and it took a few minutes before they were quiet enough for Reyer to be heard.

"I'd like to address the issue uppermost on all of our minds. It is with great sadness we must accept the loss of one of our own, Joseph Buquet."

All remaining whispers died away.

"He was a hard worker, and he will be missed. The police have ruled his death a suicide -"

A chorus of voices rose at this.

"Suicide? Joe?"

"I had no idea."

"I heard it was the ghost."

"Quiet, please!" Reyer tapped his baton again on the stand. The crowd quieted again, and he pulled a note from his pocket and peered down his nose to read it. "His death is a tragedy, and HR would like me to tell you that there is a licensed therapist available for grief counseling, and to come to the HR office if you would like to talk. Let us take a moment of silence."

The company stood with heads bowed for a full minute, the only sound the slight shuffle of shifting bodies and a few suspicious sniffles and throat-clearings coming from the group of stagehands.

"Now, onto business." Reyer said after a small cough. "Rehearsals will be running as usual today, and shows will be resuming tonight. Any questions? No? Excellent. Before we break, let's all thank Christine Daae for filling in for Lana Carlotta on such short notice, and for her excellent performance at the Gala. A round of applause!"

The company began to clap, and Christine shyly nodded her thanks. Meg, Lyla, New-Guy-Nate, and a few of the members other chorus cheered loudly while the rest of the group was more subdued. She had worried all night what the company might think of her. Would they think she was a horrid little upstart, taking roles she hadn't earned and claiming glory before she'd paid her dues? She had never wanted the role in the first place, and she worried the opportunity had been purchased at the cost of her hard-won happiness. Though the reaction seemed mixed, no one seemed outwardly angry at her. She breathed a sigh of relief.

She had hoped to talk her worries over with the Angel that morning, but the Voice had never spoken, and she had spent the morning alone.

A few people approached her as everyone moved to their places, some offering congratulations, some hoping she felt better after her faint. She tucked the kind words away, but she took very little pride in the whole affair. How could she? Fainting during what was essentially her operatic debut. How could anyone respect her as a performer if she couldn't even stay conscious for one song?

Christine turned to take her place for rehearsal and collided into someone's chest.

"I'm so sorry-" Christine started, but the rest of her words shriveled on her tongue at the expression in Lana Carlotta's eyes. The woman stared at Christine with malice for a long, tense moment before gliding past her and crossing to the opposite wing without looking back. Christine released a shuddering breath and took her place in the chorus as the opening notes began to play.

Carlotta slid through the company all throughout rehearsal, always in a new spot whenever Reyer gave them a few minutes rest, and always out of Christine's earshot. By the time they broke for dinner, Christine had noticed more than a few cold glances thrown in her direction. By the time the bows were taken, she had noticed even more.

"You were late coming in at the top of Act III." The Voice was cold, ice blue and sharp as the sun on snow.

Christine started when she heard it, nearly dropping the wig she had just removed.

"Angel! I'm so happy you're here, I've wanted to -"

"We will start with Act III. We will make sure you know exactly when to come in. The we shall move onto the other issues.

"Of course, but Maestro -"

"From the top, Miss Daae!"

The cool tone cut at her, and she blinked her burning eyes several times before squaring her shoulders and starting to sing.

The next morning's lesson went much the same. And the next. Christine was brimming with unasked questions. She wanted to _speak_ with the Angel. She needed to. She wanted to discuss the finer points of her debut, she wanted to talk about how Buquet's death made her feel. She wanted him to sing her into serenity, but he remained cool, aloof.

"Two missed lessons, and you've suffered such a decline. We must work very hard to bring you back to where you were."

Rehearsals devolved into a study of pointed dismissal. Fully half the cast and at least a quarter of the crew were ignoring her completely, and the rest seemed to be discussing her behind her back. Even Lyla was cool when Christine tried to greet her. Only Meg seemed to not think Christine a pariah.

Carlotta had turned the full force of her wrath on Christine. Every issue, every hang-up, every misstep was attributed to Christine. Carlotta would point out Christine's incorrect posture, her pronunciation of Italian, or any other claim she could use to halt rehearsal and lay the blame of it at Christine's feet.

As another long day came to an end and the company broke after final bows, Christine hung behind to avoid any post-show conversations. She didn't want to deal with being excluded by everyone. When the coast seemed clear, she began to make her way towards her dressing room. Just as she reached the door to the hall, she heard voices coming from behind a thick mass of pulleys and ropes. She crept toward the sound.

"Really?" said one voice.

"Yeah, more like friends-with-influence." said the other.

"Her and Raoul de Chagny? No way."

"That's what I heard."

"Well, Thomas was telling me that Carlotta told him that she...you know." The first voice sounded familiar, and Christine's felt that heavy weight settle inside her again.

"She what?"

"She…" The first voice paused, then came a gasp from the second voice.

"No!"

"Yeah, in the office. Apparently Carlotta need to talk to the new managers and the secretary wasn't there, so she opened the door to peek inside and she _saw them_."

"No wonder she got the part!"

Christine felt sick, but she needed to see. She peeked around the edge of the curtain and saw Lyla with one of the altos. Lyla looked up at Christine's soft gasp, and the dancer's eyes widened with shock.

Christine heard Lyla calling her name, but she ignored it as she ran for her dressing room. She careened down the hall, eyes blurry, face hot, and a sob escaped her as she slammed the door shut behind her.

"You are late." The Voice had no warmth. The Voice had no sympathy. "Did I not instruct that you are to come to me immediately after the show."

"I got held up," Christine bit out.

"Held up."

"Yes."

"And what was this 'hold up,' Miss Daae? What was so important that you would delay your appointment with the Angel of Music."

"It doesn't matter. Can we please just sing now?" Christine pushed off from where she had been leaning on the door.

"I will be the judge of that. What was the hold up?"

"Can we please just sing?" Christine's voice cracked, and her hands balled into fists.

"No. Tell me. Tell me now, Miss Daae."

With a sob of rage, Christine ripped the wig off her head and hurled it onto the couch.

"What is with you lately?" Her voice raised in frustration, her eyes glittered with unshed tears, and she dug her fingers into her scalp. "I'm gone for two days, two days, circumstances completely out of my control and you...you…"

She let out another frustrated cry and spun away from the mirror before turning and rushing back towards her reflection.

"I am trying! I am trying so hard." Her voice cracked and she laid one hand gently on the mirror. "And, and, there are so many things I want to talk to you about but…"

She leaned her forehead on the glass just as she felt two large tears start down her face.

"Please, Maestro...I don't know what I did or said to upset you…"

There was a long, long pause in which the only sounds were small and strangled and from Christine.

"Why did you lie about the boy?"

"What?" Christine stepped back from the mirror, and she could see her confusion reflected back to her.

"When the boy came here after the Gala, why did you lie?" The Voice was rapidly gaining temperature. "When he came in and said he rescued your scarf from the sea, why did you say you did not know him?"

"I– I'm not sure…"

"You're not sure. She's not sure." The Voice, the beautiful, golden voice, had taken on an edge she had never heard before. "Well, I think it is because Christine loves the boy."

"No–"

"It is because Christine loves the boy and she no longer needs the Angel of music."

"No, that's not it!"

"If you give your heart to someone here on earth, then I can no longer be your teacher. "

"I know that! I know that!" Christine was making tight circles around the room, chasing a voice she could not see.

"I will leave forever! Your father's promise wasted! Do you not understand?"

"Please, Maestro, I know!" She slammed into the corner of the couch as she turned and almost lost her balance. The fight seemed to seep out of her.

"I didn't want…" she gestured vaguely at the room, " I didn't want something like this. I didn't– I don't– want to lose you."

A rich hum darted around the small room, and Christine sank onto the couch.

"You say the boy is just a friend." The Voice sounded almost composed.

"Yes."

"Well then, if he is a friend in the same way the Giry girl is a friend, I do not mind."

"What?" Christine's brow furrowed, her voice soft and tired.

"If Christine says the boy is just a friend, then I believe her."

"Ok…"

"Yes, if he were just a friend then you would be open with me, wouldn't you, Miss Daae? If he were a just a friend you wouldn't skulk about with him in secret?"

"Yes? I mean, no?" Christine's head felt thick and slow, and she had the impression she was walking into something she didn't understand.

"Then you should spend some time with this old friend. This good, old friend."

"I don't need to, it's fine." She stood and crossed to the changing screen. She needed to go to home. She needed to go to bed.

"Oh, but if he was such a _good, old friend_ ," the Angel said, putting an emphasis on the words that Christine didn't understand, "then you would want to spend time with him."

"Really, it's fine." Christine hung her costume on the rack, picked her wig up from the couch and placed it on its stand, and put on her jacket.

"No, that doesn't make sense, Miss Daae." The Voice was back in complete control now. "If he was a friend, you'd want to see him. People like to see their friends. If you avoid him, I must assume it is because you are in-"

"Fine!" Christine interrupted, and the weight of the interruption, of the whole interaction, hit her square in the chest. Her shoulders tensed. This was the Angel of Music. She couldn't act like this. She couldn't scream at him. What was she thinking? She forced her voice to sound calm and pleasant. "That's fine. I can spend time with him."

She cast about in her mind for some way to prove...whatever it was the Angel wanted her to prove. The solution came to her like a kick in the gut, but she kept her voice light.

"The anniversary of my father's...It'll be a year in a couple of weeks," her voice cracked, just a little bit, despite her best efforts. "I'm going to Port Jarvis to visit his grave. He knew my dad. I'll invite him to that."

"Very good, Miss Daae. That is good." The Voice was sunshine again, caramel again, all-is-right-in-the-world again. Christine felt her shoulders loosen as the voice continued, even gentler. "If you permit me, I will go there as well."

"You will?"

"Yes. If you go to your father's grave at midnight that night, I will play you a song on his violin...if you would like."

The thought of hearing her father's violin filled her with a longing that overtook every other thought.

"You would do that for me?" A quiet, broken whisper.

"Oh, yes, Miss Daae."

She nodded, and swiped at her eyes. The hum danced around the room again, comforting and close. She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"May I go home now? It's late, and I really don't think I can–"

"Of course, Miss Daae," said the Voice. Christine nodded gratefully and grabbed her purse before the Voice continued in a slightly harder tone. "After one song."

All the way home, from the sidewalk to subway to bed, Christine played the scene over and over again in her head. She tried to add the pieces together, but the math did not make sense. She knew, she knew, she had to know, that the Angel of Music was real. The Voice, the feeling, everything...crazy as it seemed, how could it not be? The Angel was real or she was crazy, those were the options.

But in the very back of her mind, in a dark corner behind a locked door and several embarrassing moments she'd forced herself to forget, was a tiny thought she did her best to ignore.


End file.
